


Lanius Tenebrarum

by CatiZza



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Action, Adventure, Biopic, Damocles Crusade, F/M, Gen, Kiavahrian life and traditions, Many canonical and original details, Missing Scene, Pre-Canon, Raven Guard and their culture, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-03 22:31:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 12
Words: 31,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17886341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatiZza/pseuds/CatiZza
Summary: Deep in the slums of Kiavahr talented mortal boy is growing up. Somewhere in other place and other time Shadow Captain Shrike of Raven Guard is confronting the blue-skin Tau and trying to recompose once again the Chapter who lost their leader.Both of them are completely different.But there is one thing which unites them.**************************************************************My deepest gratitude for my talented and hardworking translator Kana Go (check out her page, she is a cool writer - https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kana_Go) and my friend Chris Sousa for beta-reading.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Lanius Tenebrarum](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9309545) by [CatiZza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatiZza/pseuds/CatiZza). 



His lungs were burning as if they were full of fire.

Blood was pounding in his ears, his heart was racing, and only one thought was pulsating on the brink of his shrinking consciousness – if he didn’t draw a breath right now, he’d be finished. Sejikhero opened his mouth reflexively, taking a few fitful gulps, as if trying to drink the water around him, trying to reach the air. He started wriggling, and in that moment a strong hand, which pressed on the back of his head, relaxed and by the scruff of his neck pulled him out of stinking ice-cold water.  

Sejikhero began to cough, trying to breathe in, and the water he’d swallowed immediately spurtled back into the bucket. Winded, he breathed eagerly for several seconds, filling his lungs with oxygen and tasting a metallic hint of waste water and his own gastric juice on his tongue. Everything was blurry before his eyes, and the face of the man who leaned over Sejikhero looked like a white smudged spot with a black hole instead of his one eye and a bright red light in place of the other. However, during the previous few days Sejikhero had remembered this face in great detail.

He narrowed his eyes, concentrating on the scarlet light – the only thing he could distinguish in rotation of the world around him – and again felt the anger that helped him to stay awake all this time. The numbness caused by suffocation was leaving his body gradually, followed by chills, and Sejikhero felt in disgust that he was starting to shiver.

No. They could see him tied, beaten and exhausted, but they weren’t going to see him weak.

Meanwhile, the light got close to his face again and firm hot fingers squeezed his chin painfully, making him look up.

“I ask you one last time, little bitch.” After the icy water the man’s breath felt sizzling hot. “How many of you were there?”

Sejikhero closed his eyes, wishing his mouth wasn’t so dry and he had enough saliva to spit at the face looming over him.

“Are you stupid or deaf?” He asked hoarsely. “I’ve already told you – I worked alone.”

“You’re lying.” The man’s fingers squeezed his chin tighter. “The rats from your pack don’t walk around alone.”

Sejikhero gave a gruffy laugh, but the chuckle which burst out of his throat sounded more like cough.

“ _I_ always work alone, Kamay,” he said, “whatever voices in your hollow head tell you.”

Kamay in his turn had enough saliva, and a thick gob through the teeth spattered Sejikhero’s cheek, making him flinch, but the hot fingers held him tight.  

 “I’ve broken tougher guys,” Kamay hissed.

He grabbed Sejikhero by the scruff of his neck and plunged his head into the ice-cold water again. He waited ‘til the tense shoulders started to jerk in convulsive effort to break free and then let his victim get his head out of the bucket and draw several fitful breaths.

Sejikhero shook his head, fighting off dizziness, took a few slow breaths and spat out bitterness burning his tongue. The water splashing in the bucket was gradually settling and now on its murky surface Sejikhero’s reflection was seen more clearly. Smudges of black paint around his eyes were mixed with blood, grayish-black streaks outlined swollen patches of bruised skin. The creature which looked back at Sejikhero out of the bucket could be hardly mistaken for a human being. He looked more like a hejer-bagu now, and the way things were, he had every chance to become one.  

A dry click of a jackknife made Sejikhero look up.

“What did Kefah pay to buy your loyalty?” Kamay asked, fidgeting with his knife. “How much did he pay you? Or your belly is full of expensive stuff?”

“There’re only bowels in my belly.” Sejikhero smiled wryly and his busted lips resounded with pain. “You can cut it open and check, but then I won’t be able to answer your questions anymore.”

“I need an answer to the only one question,” Kamay spat out, and with a swift move his knife came to Sejikhero’s throat. “How many? Of? You? Are? Here?”

“Just me.”

“You’re lying!”

“He’s not lying, Kamay.”

A deep baritone sounded from behind. Kamay turned around and stood up immediately, taking his knife away.

“Kheintarae,” he said quietly and greeted an owner of the baritone with a respectful nod.

He stepped aside. The world was still blurry, but Sejikhero recognized a visitor instantly.

Alsaan Taghellai, Half-Face, the head of the Taghellai clan, who had got his hands on medical prostheses transfers to the whole hive-city Kaohrna. He’d received this derogatory by-name after he’d lost a half of his face during the explosion at one of the plants. It had been the same explosion had taken the life of the senior Taghellai, handing over power to Alsaan who had been very young back then. The junior Taghellai surpassed his parent in everything – intellect, disingenuity, ability to flatter – and in icy cruelty. People whispered that metal augments had replaced not only his face, but also his heart and mind. People whispered he’d been killed by that explosion and only rebellious Adeptus Mechanicus had helped to return him back to life, making him more a machine than a human being. In some criminal circles, there were bets on what was beating in the Taghellai clan leader’s chest, a mechanical device or a real heart. More than one assassin had come to this or that ringleader, offering their services in exchange for an exorbitant amount of money.

 No one had come back.

“I apologize I didn’t drop by earlier.” Alsaan came closer. “But it's just been brought to my attention we have important guests. Kamay, I’m not happy with you.” He shook his head. “You should’ve reported it earlier. I’d prefer to have a word with our guest first.”

“He’s not really talkative, kheintarae.” Annoyed, Kamay jerked his shoulder. “I was going to interrogate this little rat before reporting it to you, but he refuses to talk and claims he works alone.”

“He tells an absolute truth.”

Taghellai snapped his fingers sideways, Kamay readily stepped to the wall and dragged a wheeled chair from the corner.

Alsaan made himself comfortable in it, looking at the captive.

 “If you had shown a bit less can-do spirit and a bit more brain work ability, Kamay, you would’ve understood what a big fish has fallen into your hands. A half of the Fathers of Kaohrna are ready to pay a handsome price for this guy, dead or alive.”

Kamay frowned quizzically, but Taghellai only smirked and shook his head.

“I don’t blame you, friend, because few people in Kaohrna know him by sight. Otherwise, he wouldn’t cost so much.” Alsaan looked the captive in front of him up and down mockingly and added: “Long time no see, Sejikhero.”

“Sejikhero?” Kamay’s eyebrows went up perplexedly. “I thought Sejikhero was older.”

“His talent is well ahead of his age.” Taghellai nodded. “Leave us.”

Kamay clearly wanted to say something else, but under his master’s deliberately indifferent gaze he caught himself and walked out the door. Alsaan made himself more comfortable in his chair, got a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and offered it to Sejikhero. He shook his head and Alsaan, fishing out one cigarette, returned the pack into his pocket. He lit the cigarette, had an unhurried drag and slowly, savouring the taste of good cigarettes, blew out smoke. Sejikhero sniffed with his bloody nose reflexively and for a moment he thought faint-heartedly he shouldn’t have refused Half-Face’s generous offer. Filling in these cigarettes seemed to be really decent, no match for the rubbish they stuffed into roll-ups in industrial districts.

“I suppose that I must apologize for my subordinates’ actions,” Taghellai said, being first to break the silence.

“There’s no need for it,” Sejikhero answered. “Given how much mess I’ve made at that factory, we’ll assume I got what I deserved. So we’re even, Half-Face.”

“You shouldn’t smart off, my boy.” Taghellai shook his head and casually flipped the ash off his cigarette. “To pay the price for all your seedy deeds, a couple of lives and around ten really painful deaths wouldn’t be enough.”

“You can start right now.”

Alsaan drew a breath of disappointment and drag on his cigarette again.

“Unlike your ex- paymaster, I don’t have a habit to squander valuable assets, Sejikhero. We could put aside our disagreements for awhile and I would give you a chance to work off your debts to me.”

“Why don’t you collect all these debts from Kefah?” Sejikhero rose up. “I executed his orders after all.”

“As for him, we’ll settle accounts later. Now I have to repeat Kamay’s question. What did Kefah pay to buy your loyalty, Sejikhero? What do you own him? Life? Money?”

“He didn’t buy me,” Sejikhero objected. “It’s just that from all high-level bastards of Kaohrna he could offer the most favourable terms.”

“I positively appreciate your efforts to feign an inveterate outlaw, boy.” It was the first time something like a smile appeared on Taghellai’s face and oddly contorted the living flesh. “But I have to upset you – your attempt isn’t convincing. I know it was Dago who taught you. I know it was Dago who brought you to Kefah, and I know Dago has a specific honor code. I always wondered how he’d managed to live to his age with this code.”

“It’s not up to you to judge Dago, Half-Face.”

“It’s not up to you to call the shots, Sejikhero. Are you waiting for Kefah to save you? Do you think he still needs you like before?”

“Kefah might be scum, but he’s not a fool. He doesn’t squander smart people, either.”

“Do you want me to say the sum for which Kefah sold you? I can assure you it wasn’t cheap. He doesn’t trust you, Sejikhero. Many Fathers of Kaohrna would prefer to see you dead, and Kefah is no exception. You’re talented and therefore dangerous.”

“So you decided to take a risk? To pick up a poisonous creature thrown out by mean people, put a leash on it and think it’ll secure you from bites?”

Sejikhero laughed, but immediately started coughing and spitting – something gurgled in his lungs nastily, taking away his ability to breathe for a moment.

“There’re plenty of ways to obtain guarantees,” Taghellai answered, finished smoking and stubbed out the cigarette on the armrest. “No one believes in miracles in Kaohrna, and if you want such things as loyalty, allegiance and assiduity, you have to expend some effort.”

“So you expect me to consent to your suggestion to become one of your semimechanical rats? To brown-nose the master, like they do, in hopes that today he won’t push a detonator button?” Sejikhero snorted. “You’ve just called me a complete fool, Half-Face.”

Alsaan threw the cigarette stub aside and got off the armchair.  

“I offer you a life,” he said. “Not a very bad one in comparison with others. And some guarantees. The Taghellai clan wields enough power for its benefices to justify investments. Otherwise, you’ll be stuffed with augmentics anyway, you just won’t be able to regret it. Now you have choice and at least the part of your future is in your hands. Think about my offer, Sejikhero.”

Taghellai turned around and walked out the door. It closed with a metallic thud. Now there wasn’t a sound apart from even humming of ventilation in the ceiling and crackling of an old lamp, the only source of light in this almost bare cell. Sejikhero sank back on the back of his chair, closed his eyes and moved his shoulders and fingers of his hands, handcuffed behind his back and numb from uncomfortable position. Something rustled nearby – a damp piece of plaster fell off the crack in the rough wall, flopped down on the floor and broke into pieces.

The smell of good cigarettes still hung in the air, and Sejikhero drew a deep breath, filling his tired lungs with it. He ached to smoke, but accepting a sop from the enemy meant making the first step towards his conditions. Sejikhero opened his eyes and saw the bucket in front of him again. The murky water already calmed and reflected the lamp under the ceiling.

Sejikhero breathed in and out slowly, trying to relax his tense muscles and dissociate himself from aching pain in his whole body. Where had he blundered? What was the weak link in the chain? Dago’s lessons? Sources of information? His own mistakes in route choice?

Sejikhero opened his eyes and fixed his vacant stare on the lamp reflection in the cloudy water. Yes, there was one weak link in this chain.

Niola.


	2. Chapter 2

The air in his lungs was gradually winding down.

His both hearts almost stopped, their sparse beats barely keeping his blood flowing. His ribcage started to feel compressed – even a superhuman body needed a breath of fresh air.

The creatures in front of him weren’t in a hurry to leave, they might’ve been calling their command – their armor speakers emitted sequences of odd sounds, weaving into unfamiliar words.

Shrike blinked slowly, keeping an eye on his enemies, remaining motionless.

Three Fire Caste warriors who happened to be too close to the groove he was lying in had been milling about for several minutes, talking to each other softly. They looked around and moved their weapons smoothly as if waiting for someone.

Shrike had turned off almost all systems of his armor and was lying still in a shell crater. He faded into lowering night darkness, turning into the same not fully cooled piece of armored vehicle as the ones which lay around.   

At least he wanted to believe that, and apparently his trick was working – the Tau standing nearby didn’t pay any attention to him. 

Shrike watched them, suppressing the desire pulsating in his chest that urged him to eliminate the enemy.

No.

Not yet.

 

The enhanced autosenses of his armor caught rustling and scraping noises – two more xenosoldiers appeared from the darkness. They approached their companions, talked to them briefly, strode into a battle formation and headed into the dark in quick step.

Shrike waited for a few more minutes ‘til their footsteps turned imperceptible even for the superpowered sensors of his armor, then he activated the rest of the systems slowly and took several deep breaths. Sensitivity came back gradually, and Shrike, getting his feet under him, stood up.

For now, the Raven Guard and their adversaries shared similar goals.     

“Shrike to squad,” the captain called softly after vox-channel activation. “Status report.”

The vox crackled with static noises for a couple of seconds, than responded with murmuring of hushed deep voices.

“Sector Alpha-One, situation normal. No contact.”

“Sector Alpha-Two, Captain. Situation normal. Got a haul.”

“Sector Beta-One. Got a contact, enemy neutralized. Situation normal.”

“Sector Gamma, situation normal. Keeping the search.”

Shrike waited for a few moments and called again.

“Shrike to Meleriex, over. Ramus, where are you? Situation report.”

The vox crackled dryly and hissed. Shrike adjusted frequency, waiting for an answer.

“Shrike to Meleriex, I repeat, situation report.”

Something clicked in the earpiece, gave a couple of crackling sounds, and finally a voice cut through the interference.

“Meleriex to Shrike. We’re in position, sector Beta-One, conducting a search. Spotted a big enemy squad in search of survivors. Situation normal. Avoiding a contact.”

“Continue your search.” Shrike nodded as if Meleriex could see him. “Don’t take needless risks, if they start to scour your territory in earnest, head off to Sector Gamma and join Iswin until further notice.”

“Ayenn,” the voice answered and fell silent.

Shrike looked around and soundlessly slipped into the deceitfully quiet night. The air was charged with smells of burning and burnt fuel, and the darkness was occasionally scattered by whitish-yellow flame from burning down promethium and smoldering machine frames. Shrike slipped past debris like a black shadow, freezing and blending in to them when he spotted the enemy’s search parties.

They’d had enough fighting for today.

He had more important matters.

*

“Shrike, this is just crazy.”

Scrounder, Chief Apothecary of the Third Company, shook his head and started to unseal a new package of ampoules with defiant rustling.

“It’s crazy to leave so many progenoids on the battlefield,” Shrike answered, his arms folded across his chest. “Rovi, doesn’t your duty tell you to take all measures to secure the Chapter’s future?”

 “Stop playing on my sense of duty,” the Apothecary snorted, took a clip of ampoules out of the pack and inserted it into a slot of the injector. “Sure thing, my Apothecary duty stands in a strong solidarity with you, but my common sense, life experience and logic tell me that we better tie you to a tank not to deprive the rest of the Third Company soldiers of their commander. We’ve just buried Severax, Kayvaan. We can’t lose you in addition.”

 “Objectively speaking, we haven’t buried Severax yet,” Shrike pointed out. “His remains still aren’t found. He was shot at close range, so his body was basically torn in two. Eyewitnesses claim he was pulled in half along with his armor. By the by, I’m sorry about the armor.” He turned pensively to the horizon where grayish columns of smoke were rising above the canyon. “It was nice armor. A relic, once…”

“Your jokes become even more unbearable with each passing day.” Scrounder closed the injector fasteners with a snap, securing it on his wrist.

“Who says I’m joking?” Shrike arched his eyebrow and held the Apothecary’s reproachful look unabashedly.

For several seconds they stared at each other in silence. Scrounder was the first to give up, he sighed and shook his head again.

 “I’m against such a risk, Kayvaan. I already have enough work.”

He nodded over his shoulder, pointing to the field Apothecarion which had been set up right on the spot. Stretchers and makeshift cots spread out not only in two pavilions which people were constantly coming in and out of, but also on the open ground. Among them, Apothecaries in soiled armors, servitors and brethren whose injures allowed them to help with minor work not requiring special knowledge were moving hurriedly    

Shrike frowned, looking at a supine body covered with congealed blood and dirt being laid down on a piece of tarp. The body flinched and moaned when they started to strip it of the armor which stuck to the wounds.

By Shrike’s side something rustled and clicked – Scrounder attached a new piece with gleaming polished needle to one of the Narthecium’s servoarms.

“Rovi, I ask you for the last time.” Shrike turned to his companion again. “I lost two thirds of my Company.”

The Apothecary pursed his lips, adjusting the position of an attachment.

“We collected enough corvias to honour their memory.”

“So what? In my experience, no corvias have ever sprouted!” Shrike barked, losing his patience.

Scrounder heaved a sigh as if he was going to sign a permit for Exterminatus and pointed at one of boxes.

 “Demons with you, Shrike, do whatever you want. But if you get yourself killed, don’t come back.”

Shrike nodded his gratitude and walked away with the indicated box.

His full command squad waited for him near an armored transport vehicle. 

Some of them sat on the ground, the others leaned on a dirty side of the vehicle, but when Shrike approached, they all stood up, straightened their backs and lined up waiting for orders. The captain put the box down on the ground, opened the lid and started to examine packed spare reductors.  

 “We have a painstaking and risky job ahead.”  Shrike looked up. “It’s necessary to act quickly and as a team, there’s only a few hours at our disposal. It’ll be too late to come back. That’s why if someone is injured, tired or experience technical difficulties with their armor, they should stay in the camp.”

He looked from his one subordinate to another, waiting for an answer.

“We’re ready, Captain,” Sergeant Ramus Meleriex stepped forward and responded for all of them. “Each of us will do everything we can.”

Shrike nodded his assent and fished a reductor out of the box.  

“Readiness Beta. We’ll set off in half an hour when it starts to get dark.”

-

The night falling on Denechai’s trenches turned rubble of buildings and frames of knocked-out machines into the silhouettes of mythical monsters. Fog crept out of hollows from the river and mixed with smoke and dust suspended in the air. Three months of heavy fighting had disfigured Prefectia, bringing its surface to ruin. Broken and mutilated, this planet was similar to an Imperial Guard soldier whose loyal service brought him nothing but horrendous wounds, stripping him of his human appearance and leaving him weak and feeble, forced to survive, abandoned by his comrades who had gone ahead.   

 The Third Sphere of Expansion encountered fierce resistance. Expecting an easy victory, the Blue Skins had stumbled after several triumphant steps and got bogged down in violent battles, paying for their underestimation of Imperium’s military potential.

But they weren’t the only ones who’d underestimated the enemy.

This day had taken too many lives – on both sides.

Shrike led his squad along trenches, passing abandoned firing points, hiding in the shades of burning down armored vehicles and destroyed fortifications. After a fierce ruckus, both armies had crawled away in different directions, holed up in their respective corners and now tried to recover their breath and lick their wounds.

The territory where the Third Company had spent most of the day was situated in the lowland and the trenches which dissected it were obscured with fog and smoke.    

 “…The main territory of search is a square twenty eight delta forty three”, Shrike informed his squad during the final briefing. “We’ll divide it into four parts, two soldiers for every sector for progenoid collecting and backup. Here at the mouth between channels there is an edge of the square twenty nine delta fourteen, marked as gamma sector for search operation time. Atheris, Iswin, I’ll leave it to you. In the case of loss of contact with the rest of the squad go back through the Northern Range.” 

Both Raven Guard nodded in unison.

“What about you, sir?” Sergeant Keraan inquired, fastening the reductor in his thigh holster.

“Mine are south-eastern trenches and firing points adjacent to them,” Shrike answered.

“Are you going alone, Captain?” Meleriex looked up from the map.

“I always work alone,” Shrike answered. “If something happens to me, the rest of the Third Company will shift to your command, Ramus. You’ll figure something out. If Brother Sergeant Meleriex dies, too,” he added, turning to the others, “the rest of the units will be placed under Captain Solari’s command. I left all necessary instructions for this occasion. But…” he continued with a mirthless smile, “I highly recommend everyone return safe and sound. As our Brother Apothecary had rightly stated, if you get yourself killed, don’t come back. Any questions?”

“No, sir!” his squad answered in unison.

Shrike put out his hand, and his subordinates’ hands lay on it one after another – it was the last hand shake before a sally, a good-luck ritual to cement their brotherhood.

Eleven shadows slipped out of the camp and rushed away into gloomy nightfall, stinking of burnt fuel.  

In turn, they dived into thick whitish fog and, stepping down into a trench, trickled ahead to a complex system which cut across Denechai Strait like claws.

Reaching a junction, the shadows split into pairs in a well-orchestrated manner and soundlessly went in separate directions.

Left alone, Shrike worked his way up a crumbling slope of the trench and peeped out carefully. The moist chilly wind came from the river, dissipated the smoke and brought the thick white fog instead. Icons of target autosensing were flashing before his eyes – big warm objects, hidden in the dense mist and invisible to the naked eye, lay without movement – frames of an armored column caught by enemy fire.

Shrike got out of the ditch and quickly disappeared in the fog.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 Ayenn (kiavahr.) Will comply!


	3. Chapter 3

Niola.

A thin pallid human being with big pale eyes. There was nothing attractive about her – nothing that could be compared with raekattie who were abundant in hallways when workers returned home from their shifts, nothing that could catch the eye, nothing that could draw rich benefactors’ attention to her. A white seedling which had never seen the Sun and proper food, one of thousands which were forcing their way through the darkness of Kaohrna’s lower levels. Skinny and fragile, she would be good only to satisfy immediate lust and be thrown out like a broken toy.

She looked at Sejikhero from the dark corner, somehow managing to hide between boxes. In her big pale eyes there was a look of terror mixed with servility. She knew what was coming and was ready for it. She didn’t want to die, but she wasn’t going to stop him.

Kaohrna had broken her just like millions of others.

At that moment Sejikhero tasted bitter disgust on his tongue. One time, long ago he’d seen that look.

It was the way his mother looked at the man visiting her when Sejikhero was a little boy and had a different name. He didn’t know his father and was too little to ask, but old enough to understand some things. The man who came visit his mother was almost constantly drunk, angry and he often beat her – his mother looked at him just like that. As for Sejikhero who took refuge in the dark corner, the man paid no attention to him and his mother acted like he didn’t exist. She didn’t look at the corner where her son hid and went away, taking the man with her. 

Sejikhero was afraid one day she would be gone forever and never come back. Every time he suppressed the urge to leave his corner and call her, but fear of this strange angry man stopped him.

One day the man didn’t come. Hearing heavy steps coming up the metal stairs to their door, Sejikhero hid in the corner as usual. His mother’s face once again got the absent expression as if she forgot she had a son. Sejikhero kept wondering if she really forgot it or just pretended. 

But that wasn’t him at the door. The visitor was taller, broader in the shoulders and his sharp stern face with a short dark beard seemed so ruthless Sejikhero crouched in a heap in fear in his corner. When the man stepped into the doorway, it seemed he completely filled it with his bulk and their dog-hole became darker. Mother’s vacant face looked scared now and Sejikhero decided this scary person was sent here by that man. He’d found out mother was hiding her son so he’d sent him to find Sejikhero and kill them both.

But the unexpected guest began talking, quietly and thickly, as if he’d never talked to real people. He talked, mother nodded almost without answering. He made an inviting gesture with his hand and she hesitated – and shot a frightened confused look in the direction of the dark corner, for the first time since Sejikhero had started hiding there.

That was when he realized – she had to go with this man. She was going to go away. Forever. She’d be gone and leave him here.  

He got out of his hide-out and rushed to her. A strange expression appeared on the visitor’s face – one of surprise and kind of slight disgust. Mother looked at him and there was the same confusion and plea in her eyes. Sejikhero could feel she was afraid of refusal, but even more she was scared he would go away and leave her here.

The man cast a long appraising look at her and nodded. Mother picked Sejikhero up and when the guest turned and stepped outside without looking back, she followed him hurriedly.

They never came back to that dog-hole in the labour sector.

Thus, Dago had appeared in Sejikhero and his mother’s life.

They descended a few levels lower – to the area where labour blocks ended, outside the reach of Imperium’s official laws, to the area which Kaohrna’s authorities didn’t have access to. To the area where real Kiavahran life with its time-tested laws began.

Astonishingly, the slums under labour levels were safer and more reliable than above. Here every person was for themselves, it wasn’t customary to complain to each other about life as working guys often did, gathering over a bottle of cheap booze after their shift. But here people helped each other when the matter affected everyone. Here they helped to put out fires and patch leaky pipes without waiting for official brigades. Here no one had to wait when labour block doctors deigned to get down to the residential levels, finishing their medical check-ups of workers. All of Kaohrna ran on the workers’ hands, so nobody cared for hangers-on. In the slums one sick person could make troubles for everyone else. When someone fell ill, one-eyed Mevar, an old doctor who used to serve in the Guard, got out of his den and visited the sick.    

Here people weren’t left to die, but they weren’t helped to live, either. Here the rule of the strongest, fastest and smartest worked. Here the weak had to know how to hide, the strong - how to attack.

Sejikhero learnt to do both.

Day by day Dago taught him things which could make him useful. Here, people understood better how and whom they should’ve worked for to have their piece of bread.

Dago was a strict teacher, but Sejikhero showed himself a quick learner. Day by day he mastered everything his mentor could give him. When he still was small and weak, he learnt to disappear, calculate the trajectory of pursuit, cover his tracks, elude his enemy, and enter tight places, using his small stature and weight. As he got older and stronger, Sejikhero gradually turned from prey to predator. He learnt to kill with one blow, choose the ideal time for an attack, use his agility, difference in size and capabilities of his surroundings.

But up to a certain point Sejikhero didn’t have a chance to test his skills in practice. Dago often gave him small tasks, but almost all of them involved covert penetration and extraction of different things, so the boy never had to get into open combat. Dago seemed to keep him for something else.

As for Dago’s occupation, Sejikhero knew nothing about it and didn’t try to ask. Dago often left in the evening and came back only at the end of the night. Sometimes he could be gone for several days. One time he was gone for almost two weeks, and it was the first time Sejikhero saw his mother crying. She might have thought he’d already fallen asleep. Sejikhero’s bed was situated upstairs, in the niche above Dago’s den, in the big ventilation fan box. The fan had been pulled out of the box long ago and the duct had been securely blocked with a grille, behind which squeaking and patter could be occasionally heard. Sejikhero had found this box suitable as his roost. He used a ladder to climb up there, settled in a pile of old bedspreads and slept until the morning without paying attention to what was happening downstairs. But that night he lay awake for a long time, listened to his mother sobbing quietly and thought what they were to do if Dago didn’t come back. 

He did come back – a few long days later, covered in dirt and blood. He didn’t explain anything, and no one asked questions.

In the slums of Kaohrna people didn’t ask questions.

For a couple of days Dago had to lay law in his den ‘til his wounds healed, and those days stuck in Sejikhero’s memory with the strange feeling of warmth and tranquility. Dago spent his days with him, talking about important things and teaching him unsophisticated wisdom of the slum life while his wounds didn’t let him practice close combat techniques properly, and at night from his bed Sejikhero could hear his mother groan softly and hoarsely in his mentor’s strong arms.

And that seemed… right.

She wasn’t alone, she was with him, she had someone to protect her ‘til Sejikhero was old enough. Dago never courted her – at least in a way it was understood here. He didn’t bring any gifts to her, he didn’t do stupid things for her, he didn’t show his affection or kiss her in public. He was just here like a powerful shadow, an impenetrable wall. Sometimes Sejikhero thought it might’ve been Dago who had killed that scary drunk man from his childhood and that was why the man had never come back since then.

Or maybe not, but Dago would be able to protect his mother ‘til Sejikhero was old enough to kill anyone.

One of those evenings when Dago was holed up in his den, he and Sejikhero sat at the entrance. The boy learnt to spin a knife, occasionally putting its tip on his finger pad. Dago thought it was a useful training for fingers, and Sejikhero didn’t object – the sensation of the knife flying masterfully in his fingers calmed him down.

At one point his mother drew the curtain, approached them and put two bowls with soup in front of them. She gently tousled her son’s short fair hair and disappeared in the room again. Dago took his bowl quietly and began scooping the slop with a bent metal spoon.

“You don’t love…” Sejikhero found himself starting to say.

“The soup?” Dago asked flatly without turning to him.

“My mother.”

“I don’t. But love isn’t necessary to sleep with her and protect her.”

Sejikhero took his bowl and looked thoughtfully at his reflection on the murky surface.

“Love makes a person close to your heart,” Dago continued, putting one more spoonful of the soup in his mouth. “Close people are a breach in your defense. They make you weaker and controllable. It may cost you your life.”

“Why do you protect her then?” Sejikhero asked.

 “Because she needs it,” Dago answered simply and didn’t say another word.

Sejikhero didn’t comment on this, but Dago didn’t demand any answer. He neither taught nor mentored, he just confirmed an obvious fact. In Kaohrna’s slums there was no place for love like there was no place for any other luxury accessible for inhabitants of upper levels of the hive.

He was ten Terran years old when his knife tasted blood for the first time. Sejikhero was still too little to become a true hunter, but skillful enough not to remain as prey. Dago taught him to use available resources – and Sejikhero found out victory could be independent of height and age.

He learnt to hide in the darkness, covering his pale skin with black fabric. As for his short fair hair, the boy hid it under a hood. The lower part of his face was covered with a mask and the upper one was smeared with fabric soot. This way he turned into a faceless black shadow. When Sejikhero froze still in the dark, he became fully invisible to the human eye.

And that was when he launched a strike.

He jumped from above, hit his victim’s shoulders with his heels, making a person bend over double – the low weight of his thin body and the element of surprise were quite enough to disorient an enemy for a few seconds – and stuck the knives clutched in his fists into the back of his victim’s neck. All that was left – to kick off, yanking the blades out, stab again for good measure and disappear in dark passages, leaving no trail, hole up in a crevice which a strong adult man couldn’t fit in.  

Soon people started talking about him.

No one knew his face, who’d taught him, or how old he was, they only whispered softly a whistling melodious name given to him by those who run into traces of his crimes.

Sejikhero.

A little dangerous creature which attacked its victims in the dark.

Later, when Sejikhero was twelve, fate brought him together with Kefah.

It happened after Dago had gone missing for a long time again – he’d been gone for almost ten days. Sejikhero wasn’t afraid anymore, he was old and skillful enough to feed and protect both himself and his mother. But Dago came back as he always did. Late at night he entered the room wearing a jacket soaked in blood. Old Mevar visited him on short notice and, seeing what Dago’s shoulder had become, shook his head and said he could well have lost his arm. Mevar treated him ‘til the very morning, and when he left with his deserved reward, Dago beckoned Sejikhero. The boy readily came down from his nest and sat next to his mentor.   

“Looks like my capacities will be seriously limited from this day on,” Dago said scowlingly, trying to move the fingers of his wounded hand and wincing with pain. “It means you should talk to someone.”

That evening they got out of their digs and headed upstairs. For a moment Sejikhero thought they were returning to the labour levels, but Dago led him farther, higher – there was more light here.

That was how Sejikhero first left the tunnels of Kaohrna’s slums and turned up outside where walls of the hive covered with windows, openings and grates went up, joined with numerous bridges. Sejikhero paused for a moment and looked up, but the walls shining with thousands of lights faded in reddishly orange fog at the very top.  

The air here was much more humid than in the tunnels, it seemed colder and smelled like a weird cocktail of steams, fog from lho of all sorts, burned garbage and spent fuel. It rang with noise, tension hanging overhead, human bustle and even the hum of multiple vents and cables. Translucent tubes stuck between walls and something long and dark repeatedly flashed through them. Under the cloudy coating Sejikhero could see tail lamps of train sets going through the pipes. He wasn’t able to make out if they transported people or cargo. 

One little bridge went right above a pipe, and Sejikhero felt vibration under his feet when something long and heavily loaded rattled through it.

They walked for quite some time, rising higher and higher, crossing bridges and lifts one after another, and again they turned to a dark hallway which led somewhere down.

But there very different slums started. A former plant sector, the mechanisms of which had died long ago was alive again now when people took the place of machines.  

There, in a little room, a man was waiting who was powerful enough to buy a half of the slums and get a couple of factory suburbs with the change.

Kefah Kallyaris, one of the Fathers of Kaohrna.

The Kallyaris clan kept provisions and medication supply to Kaohrna’s factory workers in their hands, and people said someone from members of this clan was included in the official government.

It turned out Kefah had heard of Sejikhero’s talents though he’d been reasonably skeptical about rumours of ‘the elusive predator from the shadows’. He still listened carefully to Dago and accepted his recommendations. As Sejikhero found out later, Kefah had been afraid Dago would defect to the Taghellai clan which was able to help him recover from his trauma and get back to fully operational state. A turn like that, obviously, wouldn’t work for Kefah. But Dago hadn’t defected, remaining loyal to his employer, and, to repay the favour, Kefah had taken Sejikhero under his patronage.  

Since that day Sejikhero’s life became harder, but at the same time more eventful and interesting. He started to leave the slums of Kaohrna more often, made trips to the factory sector and went up several levels higher. He learnt that the scarlet fog overhead in which upper floors of buildings sank was not always so bright and red. Sometimes it was whitish, sometimes grayish and at times, especially at night, it faded away and then buildings were plunged into darkness.

For almost two years Sejikhero did what Dago had taught him. He snuck where others couldn’t, got things which were guarded too well, created diversions to competitors of the Kallyaris clan, killed and covered his tracks.

Kefah was happy with him.

Dago said nothing, but sometimes in his eyes Sejikhero could see at least satisfaction of a job well done if not pride.

So when Kefah wanted a smart person for a serious task, he called Sejikhero without thinking twice.  

The head of the Kallyaris clan was the kind of the Fathers of Kaohrna who’d made it high enough to start placing brains above brute force. Kefah appreciated subtle methods and preferred surgical, but effective shots in the heart of the system to a violent strike traumatizing only its edges. Where someone else would destroy the enemy’s factory with a couple of blows, causing extensive, but not irreparable damage, Kefah chose to play more carefully.

Sejikhero’s task was infiltration in the territory of a medical augmentics factory owned by the Taghellai clan and making, as Kefah himself called it, some adjustments to its work. Its services were used by not only official health facilities of Kaohrna, but also by members of other clans and, rumor had it, even by Imperial Guard. After those adjustments for a while the factory was supposed to produce batches of prostheses with nasty, but subtle defects, turning them into time bombs. A blow to quality, reputation, connections – everything which was so difficult to make, so easy to lose and so hard to restore – that was what Kefah preferred.    

Sejikhero did his work like he always did it – quickly, quietly and effectively. He didn’t even have to kill anyone – he managed to sneak into the territory of the factory, perform his task and leave unnoticed at the exact same time when the shift was almost over.

Leaving the territory of the factory, he dived into the familiar shade, avoiding main walking passages, and headed to his home slums.

Workers rushed along the passages and over the walkways – some of them were coming back from their shift, others were in a hurry to take it, the air was full of chatter and boot stamping against metal surfaces. Sejikhero tried not to attract any unneeded attention, choosing alternative routes, but he paused near one of the turns – at the very exit from the loading area a group of workers were tinkering with a conked out servitor. They quarreled loudly, debating if they should drag it to service technicians, repair it right on the spot or just shut it down and request a new one. Sejikhero hid in the shade of containers, waiting for them to leave. 

Their loud voices roared all other sounds down, but Sejikhero’s trained hearing let him catch soft cheep and rustling somewhere behind him. He turned reflexively – the thing could be just a rat as well as a potential enemy – and saw a heap of tattered clothing and tangled hair holing up in a dark corner. Sejikhero stepped closer and peered at it. The creature which he mistook for a mutant from the underhive for an instance looked up – and Sejikhero saw a white face with huge pale eyes.

The creature was a girl, very young, not older than Sejikhero. There was a dark bruise on her cheek bone and blood on her torn clothes. The girl trembled shallowly and sobbed, clearly trying not to make any noise.

Sejikhero pulled a knife and weighed it up in his hand. He had to take her out – she saw him, and last thing he needed was a witness.

The girl noticed a knife, tensed and stopped sobbing for short while, but she didn’t make any attempt to escape or protect herself. There was fear in her eyes – but at the same time resignation and submission.

She realized he was going to kill her. She didn’t want to die.

But she resigned herself.

Just like Sejikhero’s mother, accepting the power of the man who stood in front of her.

The young man clutched the knife in his fist and approached, looking into her big pale eyes.

“Stand up,” he ordered and held out his hand.

The girl shrank, looking at his fingers.

“Stand up,” he repeated without moving or taking his hand off. “I’ll get you out of here. Can you walk?”

She stirred clumsily, apparently weakened by tears or the thing which caused them and after a small hesitation grabbed his hand. Sejikhero squeezed her shivering cold fingers and led her to the one of passages. 

He got her to the slums without letting her go. Several times he was going to open his hand and tell her to walk herself – wherever she liked. But every time he suppressed this urge, understanding she hardly had any place to go. Even if she had, if she didn’t return there at once then there was nothing there for her.

He led her to his home place and, drawing the curtain, resolutely brought her inside. Dago looked up from the table, giving the incomers the up and down, and for several long moments he and Sejikhero stared into each other’s eyes. Dago was the first to look away, then he turned to the corner where Sejikhero’s mother was busy cooking their soup and called in a flat voice, “Naya! Put one more plate on the table.”

She turned for a moment and, noticing an unexpected guest, took an extra bowl out of the drawer.

Sejikhero brought the girl to the ladder to his nest and nodded her to go first. While she was climbing up, Sejikhero fished a throw blanket out of the heap of rags, swung it over his shoulder and followed her.

“Here,” he gave the blanket to the girl.

She took it carefully, rolled herself in it like a cocoon and curled up in the corner, putting her back against the grille.

 “Move away from the grille, rats can get you through the holes sometimes,” Sejikhero threw off, removing the annoying mask and lowering the hood.

Passing his hands over his head, he ruffled his short hair and lay down stretched on the bed. His guest still sat in the corner, huddling herself up near the grille. Sejikhero could hear her try to breathe as quiet as possible.

“I’m not going to eat you,” he said with his eyes shut. “Wake me up when dinner’s ready.”

The girl didn’t answer and didn’t seem to stir at all. Sejikhero breathed in and out, relaxing his tired muscles, and made himself comfortable on his bed.

 “Hey,” he called, opening his eyes for a moment. “What’s your name by the way?”

The girl frowned with distrust as if she didn’t expect such things could be interesting for him. Sejikhero closed his eyes again and almost dozed off when he heard a soft voice.

“Niola.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 Raekattie (kiavahr. ‘melancholy devouresses’) – prostitutes who serve workers from hard jobs and dangerous enterprises in hive-cities, so-called ‘ones who help relieve stress.’ In the hierarchy of Kiavahr women of easy virtue, they take one of the lowest layers.   
> 2 Dago (kiavahr.) – ‘a strong man, a man with strong arms’.  
> 3 Sejikhero – a short form of sejikherasaan, a carnivorous bird, Lanius tenebrarum species (Laniidae family), which nests along the edges of hive-cities in wall cracks and vents and feeds mainly at night.


	4. Chapter 4

From the riverside came the wind and brought the smell of damp dirt. It was clearing the fog gradually, and monstrous silhouettes looming in the distance began to take more distinct form. He could see some glow far on the horizon – something was still burning down from the look of it. Further out pale lights were flickering, fading and appearing again.  

Something buzzed overhead so Shrike froze and looked up. An enemy’s flyer darted over the hollow and headed farther, towards the lights shining on the horizon. Apparently, it didn’t escort search teams, but just happened to pass, knowing that the hollow was relatively safe right now – but he shouldn’t have relaxed.

The fog was clearing away. It facilitated the task in some measure, improving the visibility, but on the other hand it deprived the Raven Guard of their additional cover.  

The chrono had counted about a half-hour since the mission start before Shrike managed to reach his destination. The south-eastern trenches of Denechai hollow still drowned in puffs of fog, but they cleared away faster with every gust of the wind.

Shrike set his visor, combining several vision modes at once, and the dark night turned into a strange landscape, lighting up with fantastic colors and target indicators.

Contrasting tones of the night mode aligned with thermal sensors, gaining odd hues.   

Among stones and in mud there were numerous shards and splinters of plasteel and ceramite. One of those fragments turned out to be a severed leg in an armored sabaton. Shrike got down on one knee, looking at his find closer. The black ceramite was covered with dirt and blood, so a white heraldic raven could be hardly seen through it.

There were no traces of a shell hit or a grenade explosion what meant that the owner of that leg had lost his limb by gunshot. 

The body was found nearby, in the nearest trench. It lacked a head and a left arm, but a torso remained almost whole. Shrike frowned, examining insignias on the rest of the armor.

Sergeant Itarek from the 8th squad. It had stopped communication at the very beginning of the battle, and scouts who had been sent to the district had confirmed that there were no survivors. According to the bits and pieces of the conversations, they’d been the first to get ambushed by Shadowsun. It looked like the xenos commander and the unit following her had finished their enemy off quickly.

Shrike took a deep breath to suppress sudden anger and exhaled slowly.

Not now.

Detaching the reductor from the thigh holder, he found the right jack in the armor and, unlatching a thin needle of a tester, drove the reductor into the jack. After a couple of seconds of quiet humming the tester clicked softly and blinked with a green LED.   

Then Shrike activated an extractor and drove it into the torso in front of him. The drill dug through the ceramite chestguard with a cracking noise, followed by a wet squelch of flesh being cut. The drill opened with blades, clicked and slurped again like a predator eating a juicy morsel out of its prey. Sated, the reductor folded the drill blades and clicked contentedly, sending a new capsule into a groove.

Shrike fastened it on his thigh and kept going.

He didn’t have to go far – apparently, the fight had been short, but hard. The 8th squad soldiers – or rather what was left of them – were found in the same trench. The fragments of their armor was covered with soot and fried dirt, so he managed to extract progenoids only out of a couple of the bodies which were sufficiently preserved.

Judging by the damage, it was work of a meltagun – it looked like Shadowsun really had come from this side, landing in the south-east of the hollow.      

At this point, it didn’t matter anymore.

Finishing with the last whole body, Shrike was going to get to his feet, but paused as he noticing something whitish, almost completely buried in the ground very close to his knee.  He cleaned up some dirt, pulled something shining in the night mode of his visor, and several more followed it. A whitish pendant turned out to be a raven skull caked with mud together with five more identical skulls and a couple of red beads on a string.

The corvia he’d found belonged to Brother Ahr Vitani, a very young boy who had recently joined the 3rd Company. Ahr had been a very promising lad who’d left the 9th Assault Company shortly before the 3rd had been shipped to the Damocles Gulf.

His very first serious battle had been his last.

Shrike dusted off the lace, making sure it was unbroken, and fastened it to his own armor’s belt. Securing the reductor on its former place, he slipped away into the moist night.

The fog had already disappeared, the crescent moon was pink in the sky, as if cut evenly in half. Its shining tinted the hollow, making shadows more distinct, illuminating pot-holes and significantly reducing the number of available hiding spots. 

The farther the captain headed south, the more often he had to leave the trenches and go up – the foxholes were blocked by dead bodies of Astra Militarum soldiers mixed with the Tau. Here, on the south slopes, the battles were more violent – main forces controlling the access ways to the canyon and the defensive structures upstream had been moved here.  

According to the Master’s plan, the main part of the subdivision had been supposed to be drawn in here: tactical significance of this sector, convenient approach avenues for an attack, alternate retreat routes, several suitable defence spots – any commander who knew tactics at least to the slightest extent must’ve chosen this place to set a firing position. Shadowsun thought that the enemy commanders were predictable, consequently she must’ve thought they’d do exactly that. She must’ve come here to strike a decisive blow, thinking she’d find the enemy commander here.    

Shrike smiled grimly under his helmet.

Apart from the final act, Severax’s plan had been performed with clock-work precision. The damned Tau had let the Raven Guard Chapter Master feel a fleeting moment of triumph and the delightful sensation of his rightness.

A fairly decent last gift.

Something glared nearby, and the multicolored landscape started to shine more brightly. Shrike rushed to the trench, hid in the heap of dead bodies and switched his visor to a usual night mode. The picture before his eyes faded to black and white, losing its wash of color.

The enemy flyer flew over the hollow slowly, searching the ground with two powerful lights.   

Frozen in a pile of corpses, Shrike waited the flyer to pass. Then he heard tramping of numerous feet, and the whole unit of Fire Caste soldiers went along the trench where the captain was hiding. There were about two dozen of them, heavily armed, moving brazenly.

Did they look for something belonging to them or had someone from Raven Guards been found?

Waiting ‘til the unit walked past, Shrike activated his comlink by a subvocal order. 

“Shrike to the Wing. Situation report right now. I repeat, situation report now”.

“Meleriex to Shrike,” the vox answered immediately. “Position is sector Beta-One, situation normal. Two units are found. Keeping the search”.

The vox crackled, clicked and continued quietly.

“Iswin to Shrike. Position is sector Gamma. Situation normal. No results, keeping the search.”

“Keraan to Shrike. Position is sector Beta-Two. Situation normal. Five units are found. Keeping the search.”

The vox grew silent and this time crackled a bit longer than Shrike liked it.

“Kentarek to Shrike,” it said finally. “Position is sector Alpha-One. Contact with enemy squad. Enemy’s completely destroyed, no casualties on our part. Ten units are found. Situation normal. Keeping the search.”

“Great catch,” Shrike chuckled in response.

“Doing our best, Captain,” the vox answered, crackled and immediately continued, “Vikaan to Shrike. Position is sector Alpha-Two. Eight units are found. Along with us, work is under way by the enemy search team, Captain. They’re picking up the wounded and looking for survivors. It significantly hinders the work. So far we manage to avoid the contact, but I doubt we’ll meet the estimated time.”

“Kentarek?” Shrike called.

“Go ahead, sir.”

“When you finish with your sector, join Vikaan in sector Alpha-One if the Tau have gone away from here by that time. If no, Vikaan will retreat to you until further orders. Don’t engage. Copy?”

“Ayenn,” the vox responded with two voices at once and went silent.

Shrike got out of the trench, looked around and went ahead.

For the next hour he examined the most part of the south-eastern trenches, but his search hardly produced any results – it was complicated to find right remains in the mess of bodies and pieces of machines, though several times Shrike saw fragments of ceramite shoulder guards and bodies disfigured by explosions in trenches and on the cratered ground. After inspecting the last fortification, the captain headed to the east.

The farther he went the more often he came across stone fragments, fallen pillars and broken statues. Shrike had no idea what had been situated here before and wasn’t particularly interested – by the time the Raven Guard Chapter had gotten to this sector, the Tau’s artillery had already leveled the most part of the buildings to the ground, and the locals had left them even earlier. The erected fortifications were basically piles of stone fragments, bristling with rebar, bullet-riddled and charred with las-weapon hits.  

Shrike closed his eyes for a moment, restoring the events of that hectic day in his memory. He’d been a kilometer away from here, but had gotten detailed reports from those who’d survived.

He found the first body near a pillar – the crumpled armor was bent at an unnatural angle – it must’ve fallen from something high. Shrike turned the body on its back, removing the reductor from his belt and looking into the pale bloody face. Splinters of the broken helmet had sliced into it, deforming its features.

Brother Arys Neva, the veteran, one of Chapter Master’s Honour Guard members.

Of the ten squad members, there were six now, and two of them were seriously injured. Scrounder had shaken his head and refused to provide any prognoses.

Two more were found a bit farther, closer to the fortifications. Those seemed luckier – their bodies were almost whole, and the extracted progenoids took their places in the strip of used capsules.  

Reaching another trench, Shrike jumped into it and started working his way among stones, loose ground and bodies.

The first thing he noticed was protruding turbines of a jumppack. By contrast to the mortals’ relatively small bodies, the jumppack had the look of a fighter plane which had somehow ended up in the middle of the trench. Shrike approached it, went round the fragments of the pack and got down on one knee.

The reports hadn’t lied – the shot had blown the body in half, tearing the legs off. One arm had been completely ripped off, the other was unnaturally twisted and hung on the smashed shoulder.  

Shrike removed the hood which covered the dead man’s face. The shot had burnt his hair and cheek, disfiguring those once noble features.

The dead Astartes’ face was frozen in the grimace of surprise. His black eyes stared unseeingly at Shrike.

“Was that really worth it, Corvin?” the captain asked quietly, leaning closer. “Sixty-four battle-brothers not even counting losses of other Companies. We’ve paid a too high price because of your ambitions, don’t you think so?”    

Shrike lowered the hood back on the dead man’s face as if preventing him from answering and examined the armor remains. In spite of the point-blank shot, the torso was mostly whole – the relict armor had protected its owner as best as it could. Shrike pulled out the reductor and put the needle of the tester to the burnt chest – the indicator blinked welcomingly with a green light.

The progenoid gland survived.

Shrike extracted it, unsnapped the lid and drew the capsule out to have a better look. The Raven Guard Chapter Master Corvin Severax had been a distinguished warrior who had led the Chapter to glory for many years. Possessing his progenoid would be a greatest honour for any neophyte.

Shrike measured the capsule with his eye and, letting it drop on the ground, crushed it with his armored boot. The capsule cracked and shattered into pieces mixing with dirt.

The Chapter should be protected not only from external threats.

But also from repetition of some mistakes.

A new capsule clicked into the slot of the reductor, and Shrike, putting it back into the holster, headed deeper into the ruins.   

During the following couple of hours Shrike had to take the reductor out only a few times. The sector which he was searching through had been taken mostly by Astra Militarum units, and the command team who had accompanied the captain during the battle had been near him and returned in their full composition. After Severax’s death, the remnants of the 3rd Company had left the fighting ground hastily, managing to get out of Denechai hollow before the violent scuffle had turned to the chaotic retreat. 

The mortals’ command had been disoriented and frightened – Shadowsun had managed to get the effect she needed, cutting off the head of all Imperium’s powers in the Damocles Gulf at one blow.

As for the things that had started to happen at staff headquarters, Shrike had learned about them much later. He’d been much more preoccupied with keeping the surviving soldiers alive. Command had almost fallen into infighting, trying to decide if they should continue the attack or retreat, not knowing who they should await instructions from and if they should do it at all.   

It was the Tau themselves who’d saved the day – their losses had been so extreme that their commanders, satisfied with the local victory, had given an order to retreat. Both warring armies, snapping off artillery shells after each other, had limped in different directions, giving up the fighting ground for the rival.

Combing the sector out, one square after another, Shrike grew more and more certain that there was nothing for him to do here. His subordinates were a bit luckier – according to the reports from the search pairs, they’d managed to gather almost fifty progenoids.

It could be considered as fair compensation.

No one would be able to return their fallen brethren, but others would take their place.

The time reserved for the search by the captain was running out – it’d be daylight very soon and they needed to get far away by that time.

Shrike checked the map on his retinal screen – he’d reached the very edge of the trenches. From here he could get to the sector Alpha-One quickly to join his fellow soldiers if he took a shortcut across the tributaries of the river. There was more open space there, but the darkness and speed gave Shrike a necessary advantage.

Fastening the reductor on its proper place, Shrike ran into the night.

He hardly bothered to hide to not waste time. He could barely resist the temptation to use his jumppack to hop over obstacles on his way. But in the night silence, the hollow roar of the turbines would resound inexcusably far away. A couple of milliseconds of time saved weren’t worth such a risk.

Reaching the bend, Shrike jumped down and went to the river with several quiet leaps. The fog was still curling here, in the gully, and its grayish swirls were heaving above the water surface. There was dark debris on the shore brought by the stream, several times something cracked under the captain’s feet.    

Shrike looked around, choosing the way, and turned sharply when a designator on his retinal display illuminated a big dark object lying at some distance.

The Raven Guard Chapter Power Armor.

Its generator was still active.  

The captain covered the distance between them with a few steps and started examining the body in the wet mud. Covered in silt, sand and clotted blood, the dead marine looked like a ksenomonster, an earth creature, the kind of those that Shrike happened to see in the drowned mines on Mallerna XIV.

It was hard to see insignias clearly, so Shrike, prying muddy fastenings of the headpiece up, took it off carefully and exposed a pale face, covered with clotted blood.

Sergeant Ghevar Hess of the 2nd Company, one of Captain Aajz Solari’s seconds-in-command.

At the time of the retreat the 2nd Company had been situated upstream, so the sergeant’s body might’ve been brought here by the stream.      

Shrike took the reductor out and, after confirmation of the tester, activated the extractor. It had already touched the ceramite surface of the breastplate, when Hess’ pale lips, stuck together with blood, opened with effort and a quiet hissing escaped them.

Shrike flinched, jerked the reductor back and, putting it into the holder, leaned closer and called, “Ghevar? Ghevar, can you hear me?”  

Once again wheezing and hissing fell from the slightly open mouth. Hess’ eyelashes fluttered, but he couldn’t raise his bloody eyelids. Shrike took his hand.

“Don’t say anything, Ghevar. If you hear me, squeeze my fingers if you can.”

The hand Shrike held twitched and squeezed the captain’s fingers convulsively.  

«C…ha…ptain Shrike?»

Hess’ voice sounded husky and soft, like it went from a broken speaker.

“It’s me. Save your strength, you’re going to need it.”

“No,” Hess soughed, trying to open his eyes. “I… won’t last… take… the progenoids.”

Shrike wanted to check the readings of his armor, but it was too damaged and dirty so he couldn’t find any working indicators. Shrike shook his head huffily and activated his comlink.

 “Shrike to the Wing. Brethren, who’s the closest to me? Square Epsilon Two-Ten, to the north-west of the ruins of the eighth firing point.”

A few seconds of crackling later, the vox said quietly, “Kentarek to Shrike, we’re the closest, Captain. Do you want us to move to meet you?”

“I want you to move to me,” Shrike answered. “Need help. I found a survivor, cover and transportation are required.”

 “Sir, the reserved time of the operation is coming to an end,” Kentarek said after a pause. “We won’t be able to return to the camp before dawn with an injured person on our hands.”

“We will if we don’t waste time on unnecessary discussions, Naro,” Shrike snapped. “We can leave him and take the progenoids at any point, after all.”

 “My fault, sir,” the vox sighed. “We’re moving out immediately. We’ll be with you in fifteen.”

“Roger that. Shrike to the rest of the Wing. Finish your search and return to the camp. Copy?”

“Ayenn,” the earpiece answered in a discordant chorus and fell silent.

Shrike took his helmet off and shook his head, disheveling the flat hair. He drew a deep breath, filling his lungs with moist fresh air. Cold chill was coming from the river, the night darkness wasn’t already so thick, and the eastern sky was changing its color from black to violet.

It wouldn’t be long ‘til the dawn.   

Shrike peeled his gauntlet off, came closer to the river and, getting a handful of water, washed his face. The water smelled like musty dirt and promethium.

Getting back to Hess, Shrike settled near him, looking at his bloody face, Weak breath was coming from his half open chapped lips with rattling and whizzing.

Ten minutes ‘til Kentarek’s arrival, about thirty more to get back to the camp – provided that they wouldn’t stick anywhere, running into the enemy’s search teams.

Shrike looked up at the stars which were gradually flickering out overhead.

 


	5. Chapter 5

She constantly waited for Sejikhero to demand payment for his help. She waited for him to take the cover away, strip her remaining rags off and do the things to her which workers had done at the upper levels. She was ready to pay – he had saved her life, given her shelter and food.

But he didn’t demand any payment.    

When Sejikhero opened his eyes, awoken by the smell of warm food, he found that all this time Niola had sat cowering in the corner. However, she crawled away from the grille – apparently, their neighbours with tails bustling behind it had tried to get to the cover and pull threads out of it.  

She didn’t immediately take the risk of coming down from the ‘nest’ and sitting at the communal table. When she did, she ate carefully and hastily as if being afraid that her bowl could be taken away at any moment. When Sejikhero followed her back to the ‘nest’, she, meeting his eyes, bit her lip and started undressing.

 “Stop it.” Sejikhero brushed her off and, offering her the cover she’d shuffled off, settled on his bed. He heard Niola rustle in her chosen corner, rolling herself up like a cocoon, and turned his back to her to demonstrate he wasn’t going to attack and didn’t wait for her to do it. She didn’t dare lie beside him, and when Sejikhero woke up he found her in the same pose – the girl was dozing, curling into a ball and burying her face in her knees. Sejikhero didn’t attempt to wake her up.

Gradually she got used to it – stopped flinching at other people’s sudden movements, stopped hiding in the corner when Sejikhero got to his ‘nest’, stopped waiting for them to take away things they gave her. She tried to help Naya as best as she could and diligently learnt everything she didn’t know how to do yet – as if wishing to work out the debt, to pay for this unexpected kindness.  

She stopped sleeping in a sitting position in the corner, but if Sejikhero was first to climb to his ‘nest’ while she was finishing her house work, she settled downstairs, on the floor or on the crude bench near the table.

Sometimes Sejikhero watched her, sitting in his ‘nest’ and dangling his feet, sucking lho sticks borrowed from his older buddies – Dago didn’t approve this habit his pupil had gotten into, but he never stooped so low as to give sermons – or stretching on his side with his head reclined upon his hand. He watched Niola crawl on the floor and rub off the dirt, watched Dago sharpen the knife blade at the table, watched his mother busy herself with a pot on the hot plate.

He appreciated those calm evenings which rarely happened in his life since he’d started working for Kefah.

The more days passed, the farther Niola’s fears went away – when one night she had a bad dream, she nuzzled close to Sejikhero, pressed against him with her whole thin body, nestled her forehead against his back. Sejikhero felt her shiver and after some hesitation turned and hugged her, covering her with an edge of his own blanket. She tensed up immediately like a string and tried to crawl away, so he clenched his fingers tighter.

“Go back to sleep,” he ordered softly and, making himself comfortable, went still, showing that he wasn’t going to do anything.

Gradually Niola’s breath became even, her tense body relaxed, and she fell asleep, burrowing her nose in his clavicle.

Dago said nothing to his pupil – either when the young man had taken his ‘score’ to the house, or later, when Niola made herself at home in the new place. 

Only once when they were training hand-to-hand combat techniques for the nth time and Niola, sneaking from behind the door, brought them some food, Dago watched her leave and asked, “Why do you protect her, Sejikhero?”

“Because she needs it,” he answered then.

Little by little, fear left her big pale eyes for good, and next time Sejikhero saw it only several months later when, covering his tracks and trying to outrun his pursuers, he didn’t show up in the slums for several days. When he came back, tired, dirty and covered in someone’s blood, looking more like a thing from the underhive than a human, Niola threw her arms around him, clung to him with her whole body and broke into quiet tears. 

He just stood still like a fool and didn’t know how to react, what to tell her, how, beshrew her, to detach her hands of his shoulders while she cried and kissed his cheeks, getting herself dirty with the disguising paint which got smeared all over his face. Dago peeped out from behind the curtain and looked at this scene with disapproval, mother began to make some noise in the kitchen, and Sejikhero felt awkward.  

“Just get off me already!” he snapped finally and made the girl move away.

She hung her head guiltily and, retreating to the corner, perched on the bench. She didn’t let any sound fall while Sejikhero, sniffing, washed himself with brown water from the bucket; she said nothing while he finished the leftover soup, and only when he got to his ‘nest’, she had the courage to follow him and carefully press herself against his shoulder.   

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come back,” she said quietly. “I was scared without you. Really really scared.”

“Even more than with me here?” he snorted.

Annoyance kept bubbling inside.

“I’m not scared with you.”

The girl shook her head and cuddled up even closer.

“Someday I won’t come back, Niola. You’ll have to learn how not to wait for me,” Sejikhero said after a pause.

 “Then I won’t wait.”

She moved away, drew herself together, reached to him, and her lips touched his awkwardly. She didn’t know how to kiss properly – she had had no one to teach her, and those who had been in her life before him hadn’t wasted themselves on kissing. She didn’t know how to kiss properly, and her palms were little and cold and didn’t feel like raekattie’s skillful fingers at all. She had no idea what exactly she should do, she couldn’t let out the feelings which swelled inside her, she was at loss and didn’t understand in what sequence she should act. She wasn’t accustomed to the fact she didn’t have to just wait, wasn’t accustomed to being a full-fledged participant in what was happening, so she willingly gave Sejikhero the upper hand when he caught her into his arms, dropped her on the bed and lay down on top of her. She was thin, very thin, fragile and pale – he could see each vein on her wrist. Her breasts were still small and fit into his not quite wide – much narrower than Dago’s – hands, and her hips were still very narrow, they were just beginning to take rounded shape.      

Niola held on his shoulders so desperately as if she was afraid he was going to leave again, right now, to never come back. So she sobbed and called his name quietly like she wanted to make sure he was still here.

“Sejikhero…”

He didn’t answer, just kept kissing her clumsily anywhere he could reach – on the lips, chin, cheek – pinning her to the bed even tighter and moving even more sharply, breathing out fitfully through his teeth. She sobbed for the last time, in a high-pitched voice, almost plaintively, and flinched as if trying to break free, and then Sejikhero pulled her close shivering, exhausted and sated.

So he remained lying on top of her, putting his head on her chest, and closed his eyes, when her thin fingers, warmed up, hot, started to tumble his wet hair.

Sejikhero dozed off, listening to her heartbeat. 

“Kefah wants to see you,” Dago said one day, entering the room. “Immediately.”

Sejikhero finished his soup at a couple of gulps, wiped his mouth with his sleeve and left the table. The head of the Kallyaris clan often summoned Dago – Sejikhero had no idea about their contact methods and had never seen any devices. Sometimes he thought Kefah could send a mental call like some damned jeharni. But as for the tasks for Sejikhero, Kefah almost always passed them along with Dago, reducing their face to face interaction as much as he could.  

He was right in a way – the more seldom Sejikhero would show up in the Kallyaris clan’s property, the fewer chances for their connections to become known. A few times Sejikhero had created fake diversions in Kefah’s territory, letting the man deflect blame away from him.

If he called Sejikhero to his place, it meant the events were taking more serious turn. There had been some unrest on the lower levels of Kaohrna recently – or rather, even more of it than usual. People said that in one of the bordering sectors a band of mutants had broken out of the underhive and gotten to the labour levels through the pipes. The official authorities intervened, and while the creatures had been caught and destroyed, they had managed to make quite a stir. Upstairs they had started to investigate who had overseen floodgate defense and who to blame, while, attracted by squeaking of chairs turning wobbly under officials, those who had flocked to take vacant seats. The Fathers of Kaohrna, detecting the scent of opportunity to get a decent piece of the pie, started moving and began to persuade and intimidate, lure and promise support, concurrently squabbling among themselves and eliminating the competition.     

Kefah used this circumstance to strike out at his old enemy, so within the last month Sejikhero had to get to the territory of the Taghellai clan’s factories on numerous occasions, circumventing cunning local safety systems. The head of the Taghellai clan had tried to jam a proposal for creating a special unit through Kaohrna’s government – the augmentics developed by his engineers and produced with the assistance of specialists from Mars were supposed to level the playing field between people and mutants. Degenerates from the lower levels of Kaohrna, created by ages of survival in the aggressive environment, were fast, strong, able to perfectly see in the dark, in addition no chemicals could harm them. Armor-clad heavily armed hunters became easy preys. Alsaan Taghellai’s plan had received the approval in the government, and in the event of its acceptance the Taghellai clan would have gotten their hands on too much power.

Kefah, like the rest of the Fathers of Kaohrna, wasn’t going to allow it.

Through an informant Kefah had found out that the Taghellai clan had called for desperate measures, realizing time was tight and the other clans’ attacks would be increasingly frantic. Alsaan Taghellai had chosen one of the least reinforced floodgates as his target – mutants, smelling a slack, had already attempted to get out through it, tasting fresh blood and sweet flesh, not poisoned with chemical fumes. Taghellai’s plan had been simple – to provoke breaching, weakening the floodgate defense, and then repel mutants’ attack, thus pointedly demonstrating benefits of the modifications they’d suggested. Taking advantage of the confusion among the government members, they could’ve triumphally clinched the delivery deal.         

Kefah was taking a big risk, intending to gain the upper hand and strike at the only soft spot, in that single moment when they could turn Taghellai’s entire plan against him. If they managed to destroy prepared batch of prototypes immediately after the conclusion of transaction, Taghellai wouldn’t be able to provide a replacement within the established time frame; then the desperate members of the government would jump at any alternative for fear of outbreaks of discontent in the labour blocks. And so the one who’d be the first to propose a plan would get the victory.

In its turn, the Kallyaris clan had nothing to offer – it controlled only the supply of food, not weapons – but Kefah had mentioned that, to curb the Taghellai clan’s wants, he’d concluded a temporary truce with some other Fathers of Kaohrna. In the face of the enemy who’d been growing in strength small clans often united to peck a colossus to death together and drag its corpse to pieces.     

To infiltrate a heavily guarded warehouse and destroy the prototypes, Kefah needed a skillful and reliable person – and Sejikhero turned out to be just that person.

“I could task Dago with this work,” Kefah had said after giving all necessary instructions. “But Dago has been not half as good as you for a long time now, Sejikhero.”

“Don’t complement me for work undone, kheintarae,” the young man waived it away and lifted the corner of his mouth before putting on his usual mask. “It’s bad luck.”

The security system took some doing – since Sejikhero’s last foray into the Taghellai clan’s territory the outdoor surveillance systems had undergone several upgrades. Taghellai knew the cost of time at war, too, and didn’t waste any single minute.

Sejikhero checked the chrono and, like a soundless shadow, slipped between two rows of containers glistening with beads of condensation. The air was humid, and the mist suspended in the air tasted like acid on his tongue even through the mask. Sejikhero could feel a drop of sweat dripping down his temple, mixing with moisture and the disguise paint.    

His clothes stuck to his sweaty back unpleasantly, and the backpack with explosives, hanging on his shoulders, felt heavier than usual.

Sejikhero reached his target building, looked around quickly, checking for cameras, tip toed to the basement vent and took a multicutter from his hip. Picking away the vent grid, he cut the cable, crawled into the hole feet first and covered it with the grid again.  

Getting inside, Sejikhero started crawling along the tube, pushing off with his hands, ‘til it finally intersected with another one, giving him the possibility to turn so that his head looked in the right direction. Squirming like a giant worm, Sejikhero reached a grille, checking the plan drawn on his wrist under the sleeve, and began to undo the pins that held the panel of one more vent. He took it off carefully, peering into the resulting gap, and, making sure there was no one nearby and the camera in the corridor was looking in the other direction, put his hands out and flowed out of the tube.    

Landing on the floor, he pushed himself off with his hands and turned somersault, decreasing inertia. The camera turned to him like it was just waiting for this movement, but Sejikhero managed to roll sideways, into the shade, where he froze still and motionless. The camera cast an indifferent look at the place where he was just lying, merging with the darkness of the hall, and turned away.      

Sejikhero scrambled to his feet, rushed to the wall and pressed against it just under the camera. The thing turned again, peering into empty shadows, and Sejikhero slipped into the passageway. Passing one corridor after another, Sejikhero reached the room he was looking for and, finding himself in a poorly lit hangar, started sneaking among the boxes, looking closely at their markings.

Kefah’s informants had told him the approximate lot number – according to the source, the scatter was about two days, so Sejikhero had taken plenty of explosives.

Finally, figures and symbols on one of the boxes matched those written on Sejikhero’s hand. 

Looking around, he settled in the shade of the box and, taking the bag off his shoulders, fished out the first charge. He tore off the protective film, exposed the adhesive layer and pressed it against the wall of the box. The adhesive immediately reacted with the metal surface and penetrated it deep like an alien parasite.

 

Sejikhero detached the upper lid, activating the timer. Entering a few commands quickly, he snapped the lid shut and was about to recover his legs…

When he felt a muzzle of a lasgun press against the back of his head.

“Stand up,” the hoarse voice ordered, “and no sudden movements.”  

Sejikhero looked out of the corners of his eyes and in his peripheral vision he noticed shadows which appeared from the both sides. In the faint glow of security lights he could see gleaming of weapons in their hands. Dark red uniforms of the warehouse security service looked almost black in semi-darkness.

Sejikhero put his hands up and stood up slowly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 Jeharni (derivative from kiavahr. jeha ‘mind, soul’ and haarnae ‘to fuck rough’) – a slang term for psykers. Also, both a charlatan sorcerer and a too smart insightful person can be figuratively called that.


	6. Chapter 6

The sun peered out above the horizon, looked at the smoke-laden surface of Prefectia and, as if not content with this sight, went up into gloomy grey clouds. The sky turned grey – the fumes which were rising from heated ground mixed with ash and accumulated into lumpy heavy clouds of condensation. 

The sun shining through them, blurred and dull, hung above Prefectia like an orange coin, reminding him of Kiavahr.

In dim morning light the grimy bird’s bones looked completely yellow as if they had been sitting in the ground for many years rather than dangling on the Raven Guard soldiers’ belts only yesterday.

Shrike fiddled with the bundle of corvias, tapping his finger thoughtfully on the skulls hanging on a string.    

Three skulls interspersed with multicolored beads.

Brother Korys Nexx.

For two long years he’d fought shoulder to shoulder with Shrike on Targus-VIII, and during violent battles he hadn’t had a scratch.

Five skulls on a braided two-colored string.

Brother Naehra Kev.  

A talented soldier and natural saboteur who had put into action – without a hitch – the ambushes developed by Shrike during the hunt for daemon-prince Voldorius on Quintus.

Two skulls and three raven’s claws.

Brother Orvas Aethano who had distinguished himself in action during the battle for Voltoris. His success had made him a perfect candidate for the position of a sergeant.

Shrike clenched the bundle of corvias in his hand, looking pensively at the orange disc hanging above the horizon. 

 Primarch and Emperor had protected all those brothers during dangerous missions, during suicidal assignments, during complicated delicate sabotage operations – just in order they all had fallen victims to someone’s mistake.

Shrike made himself more comfortable on the shell container which he had chosen as his perch and put the corvias aside. After many weeks of ceaseless battles, never-ending affairs and force majeures, forced inaction weighed him down, but the captain had failed to come up with a suitable task for himself. After puttering about the camp, set up in the ruins of a semi-abandoned mine complex, Shrike had asked techmarines who were repairing their armor a couple of unimportant questions, enquired after apothecaries’ success, got his pennyworth from busy Scrounder and finally settled among the boxes near the main tunnel entrance.  

In such situations other captains went to see chaplains to ease their souls and clear their heads, but Shrike rarely made use of this means. Over the centuries he’d belonged to the Chapter he still didn’t get used to heart-to-heart talks, preferring to keep his thoughts to himself.

“We don’t have any chaplains with _such_ strong nerves in the Chapter,” that was how he laughed off proposals for a confession.

However, he was only partially joking.   

Shrike took out the string from his hair and shook his head, letting the strands tumble down over his shoulders. It had grown long enough to start bothering him and demanding too much attention, but in the past three months the captain hadn’t managed to carve out a few minutes to do anything with it. That was why finally he’d given up on it. It still fit under the helmet, and that was good enough for him.    

Fishing the largest corvia out of the bundle, Shrike fiddled with it, running his fingers over the row of raven’s skulls.

There were eleven of them, soiled with mud and covered with soot. One of the skulls had lost its beak, and empty eye sockets were looking at the world very reproachfully.

“There you are, hero.”

Shrike heard someone’s sarcastic voice and turned around. Captain of the 2nd Company who revealed himself from behind grinned wide and, reaching the box, stepped over it with ease and settled next to him – the length of his legs allowed him to perform this trick without the slightest difficulty.

“Aajz,” Shrike nodded and gave the man’s wrist a short squeeze. “How long have you been here?”

“I’ve just flown in on a gunship moving in this direction,” Solari stretched his legs, examining the corvia in Shrike’s hands.    

Lanky Aajz Solari, Captain of the 2nd Company, was called a plenty of nicknames of varying degrees of offensiveness behind his back – mainly for his ways of working which didn’t really fit the Chapter’s doctrine – but most often he was called ‘the living embodiment of Spire.’ One of the most outstanding points on the list of his accomplishments was his rather significant stature which made even some Salamanders look up to him. Shrike, not the shortest marine in the Chapter, barely reached Solari’s shoulder. As for Aajz himself, he took his nickname with humour – just as everything else under the sun.

“Sulking?” Solari inquired, touching the skulls in Shrike’s hands with his finger.

“I’m bored,” he answered. “Between fights the commander becomes the most useless part of the team.”

“You could’ve put this time to better use,” Solari snickered. “Like getting some actual rest. How long since you’ve seen yourself in the mirror?”

“I remember my own looks well enough, so I don’t have to look into it every day,” Shrike snorted, brushing away a strand of hair falling in his face. “Aajz, are you here to take over Korvydae’s job as a soccer mom?”

“I’m here to thank you,” Solari didn’t look insulted at all. “For Hess.”

Shrike smiled joylessly, fiddling with the corvia.

“Don't mention it.”

“It was a risk. Putting three lives on the line, your own one among them, to pick up a badly wounded man without even a guarantee that he’s going to make it to the camp – not everyone would agree to it, especially in our conditions. I’m not sure I’d do the same,” Solari admitted after a pause.

“If even you refuse to risk, things are really bad,” Shrike smiled with the corner of his mouth, but the smirk turned out wry and grim. “How’s he, by the way?”

“He’ll live. Brother apothecary Scrounder says he’ll need some augmetics, so they are sending him to orbit today. He’s not going to die any time soon. I owe you one, Shrike.”

 “Stop it,” Shrike waved him off. “Every life counts now, why should we pin unnecessary debts on each other?”

Solari nodded, looking up at the orange coin over the horizon. It’d risen higher and become brighter, taking the color of molten gold.

“About fifty progenoids, eh?” Solari asked quietly, turning to him.

“Almost all,” Shrike nodded. “Has Rovi already told you?”

“In brief. I can’t say he’s thrilled about your heroism.”

“I can’t say I really care about his opinion on this subject.”

Solari smirked, but his smile faded quickly.

“The commander of the remaining Astra Militarum units contacted me,” he said. “They asked what they should do next.”

“I have no idea,” Shrike shrugged his shoulders. “If you’re expecting a meaningful answer from me, then sorry, I can’t help you. My mind isn’t on mortals right now.”

 “You’re the second in command after Severax in the Damocles Gulf, Kayvaan. It was also you who worked on the strategy with him.”

“The whole Conclave discussed that strategy, Aajz.”

“It’s more like Corvin gathered us all and made us face the fact as usual, kindly listening to our opinions and doing as he saw fit.”

Solari snorted, staring at his fingers. They – long and thin – reminded of legs of some arachnid which was entangling its prey with its web.

“However, everyone knows how much time you spent in his quarters together with Chief Librarian, and some of those who happened by could hear how loudly you were arguing.”

 “Any shadow in Spire has ears, eh?” Shrike turned to Solari and looked him up and down.

“And what one shadow knows the whole darkness will know the next day,” the other man nodded. “You’re the only one of the senior officers who knew the whole plan from beginning to end, Kayvaan. Knowing you, I don’t believe you didn’t have a backup plan.”

 “I didn’t rule out some variants,” Shrike answered vaguely. “I did everything I could. But it wasn’t enough.”

“It was enough to stop the carnage before every single one of us died in it.”

“What are you getting at?” Shrike turned to Solari and looked into his black eyes.

Solari held his stare and then again reverted his eyes to the sun hanging over the horizon.

 “Stop thinking we are fools, Kayvaan. You knew the whole plan. You knew Corvin very well. You knew how great his ambitions were and what he was seeking on the battlefield. It was your Wing who found – or thought they’d found – Shadowsun, and your people informed Severax about her whereabouts. She didn’t try to be discreet after all, but rather vice versa. She set the very same trap like the one Corvin hoped to catch her in. Are you trying to say you didn’t realize it?”

“The fact that he didn’t realize it was enough.” Shrike smiled, and that smile which stretched his pale lips became wider, but at the same time colder. “He didn’t manage to see something so obvious and threw himself into the trap head first – with that he clearly demonstrated he wasn’t suitable to be our leader. It’s not my fault.”

“You could’ve stopped him.”

 “I did just that, Aajz,” metal could be heard clearly in Shrike’s voice. “I stopped him. He went too far. Put bluntly, he went too far. Two thirds of my company, yours, the Fifth, the Tenth – for what? To chalk up another glorious victory? The Tau surpassed us in strength, winning one battlefield after another. It annoyed Corvin too much. He was going to obscure the enemy’s fame with the glory of his own. He wanted the Raven Guard Chapter to take credit for the victory where Imperial troops failed, where White Scars gave up and retreated – the chapter we’ve been at quarrel with for a long time. He still saw them as adversaries and wanted to prove that the Raven Guard Chapter, despised by them for our slipping in shadows was more powerful than them. When they got under him, it greatly flattered his vanity, you know? He scorned Captain Kor’Sarro who was obsessed with chasing his prey, but he didn’t realize he was barely different in his pursuit for glory. He’d wasted all of us, Aajz. I couldn’t stop him in Spire and I wasn’t able to stop him later. You have every right to judge and court-martial me after we come back, but someone needed to stop him.”  

 “If there’s something you’re to be judged for that’s for your failure to whack him on the head, tie him up and lock him up back then in Spire when it had to be done,” Solari said after a pause. “We’d have avoided a lot of unnecessary losses. Everyone understands everything, Kayvaan. No one is blind. But only you were brave enough to take this step.”

 “I just got lucky. The circumstances worked out too well, and I couldn’t but use them.”

Shrike got silent, and for several long moments the captains sat quietly.

“Someone has to take his place,” finally Solari said softly. “Someone who’ll be able to protect us from repeating mistakes like that.”

“This someone can be any person with a head on their shoulders,” Shrike answered, looking at the corvia in his hands.

Eleven raven’s skulls looked at him blindly with their empty eye sockets.


	7. Chapter 7

A metallic noise of the door opening made Sejikhero look up. They came back together again – pointedly indifferent Alsaan Taghellai whose face’s metal half looked almost more alive than an organic one, and Kamay who glared at Sejikhero icily.

Kamay obligingly moved the chair closer, and Alsaan made himself comfortable in it, crossing his legs. He fished out a pack of cigarettes and offered it to Sejikhero. After a short pause the young man nodded.

If it had to be the last cigarette in his life, so be it.

Taghellai nodded towards him, and Kamay uncuffed the captive’s wrists. Sejikhero hissed through his teeth, moving his numb hands, and rubbed them together heartily before taking a cigarette out of the offered pack. Getting a light from a lighter which was helpfully put to his face, Sejikhero drew in on it, tasting expensive tobacco with delight.  

Kamay froze behind him quietly like a shadow, and Sejikhero sat back and relaxed deliberately to show that a guard near his shoulder didn’t put any pressure on him.

Taghellai let him take a few unhurried puffs, and only after Sejikhero flicked ashes from his cigarette he asked:

“So what do you think, Sejikhero? You had enough time to consider my proposal.”

“You presume it’s alluring,” Sejikhero shrugged and took another puff, “but I didn’t find it such.”

 “You have no idea what you’re missing. The Taghellai clan is growing in strength. Getting under its wing means acquiring one of the most powerful patrons in Kaohrna. Besides… it’s a great possibility to take revenge on those who betrayed you.”

Alsaan took a jack-knife out of his pocket and, clicking its blade open, made it plunge into Sejikhero’s chair back with a well-aimed toss, narrowly missing the captive’s shoulder. Sejikhero turned and yanked the knife out of the chair. 

The knife belonged to him. Dago had given it to his pupil long ago, and it was the same knife which Sejikhero had used to kill his first man. One of the fasteners on its handle was unsoldered, revealing a blinking LED of a tracker. So that was how they’d pinned him down in that warehouse. From the very beginning Taghellai had known that Sejikhero had come to him.

But how...?

Sejikhero frowned. Only one person had gotten close enough to him to wait for the right moment, take the knife and hand it discreetly to those who could bug it. Or bug it on their own, receiving all necessary instructions.

“How did you convince her?” Sejikhero looked up. “Did you intimidate her? Buy her?”

“You’ll have the possibility to ask her in person.” The corner of Taghellai’s mouth twitched as if he was going to smile. “Also, you’ll be able to pose a couple of questions to Kefah. I think you’ll have them by then. As I’ve already said he didn’t ask too little for you.”

“So how much is, in his opinion, my head worth?” asked Sejikhero grimly, fiddling with the knife.

“His own life,” Taghellai did curve the human part of his mouth which apparently meant a smile. “He turned out to be too much of a coward. All these scavengers are brave when they flock, while alone they prefer to follow at a predator’s tail. Kefah is afraid of me, he’s afraid of you and when he’s left alone he starts to be afraid of his own shadow. He was afraid of Dago, too, you know? But Dago dropped out of the game and you started to gain strength. In addition, you brought that girl from the territory of my factory, and Kefah assumed you were unreliable. So, he decided to land the first punch before you did. I found out about his plan to interfere with my…” Alsaan paused for a moment as if trying to think of a suitable word, “presentation and paid him a visit to make a business proposal. Kefah lacks courage, but he’s smart enough, so he figured correctly that it was better to join the Taghellai clan than to be crushed by it.”

“What made him think you’d spare his life, Half-Face? He’s not a fool.”

“I convinced him we could always come to some understanding. He bought his life by selling yours to me. He knows what a high price other Fathers of Kaohrna are ready to pay for your head; he knows I’d prefer to see you dead like many others and he’s sure I’ll kill you as soon as I get my hands on you. But instead I’m offering you a good bargain, boy. You’ll get expensive giblets, possibility to get revenge and be able to wipe out Kefah any way you like.”

“Am I supposed to believe you after everything I’ve just heard?” Sejikhero flared. “You give out guarantees easily. Tell me the reason why I should believe at least in one of them.”

“The giblets I’m offering you are a guarantee for both parties, Sejikhero,” Alsaan answered. “I can squander people, but I prefer not to waste expensive augmetics. Think properly. New times are near, new power is coming. You’re still able to decide if you choose to rise with the strong or rather perish with spineless bastards who don’t deserve your loyalty.”

“Once eight mutants gathered in a circle,” Sejikhero snorted in reply, “and each of them looked at the others and thought, _What ugly monsters they are_!”

“You disappoint me,” Alsaan shook his head. “You seemed quite clever and level-headed, but the more I look at you the more I see an ordinary urchin whose head’s full of chimeras like fairness and goodness. Dago is undeniably a nice tutor, but unfortunately he knocked too much nonsense into your head.”

“Quite the opposite. He didn’t teach me to scavenge and sell my skin short,” Sejikhero smiled wryly.

“So, you’ve made your choice,” Taghellai nodded and, getting out of his chair, snapped his fingers twice clearly.

Sejikhero didn’t manage to react to a lightning-fast movement – Kamay knocked the knife out of his hand and twisted his arm. Swinging the door open, two more men in warehouse security uniforms entered the room. They grabbed a resisting Sejikhero under his elbows and, pulling him from the chair, dragged to the exit.

Sejikhero remembered only vaguely which way he’d been dragged to the cell where he’d spent last few days – everything had been blurry before his eyes after a couple of painful blows inflicted by the guards – and semi-darkness which prevailed here made all corridors look the same. It’d allow him to confuse pursuers, but it also hurt Sejikhero’s chances considerably – he was much less familiar with these hallways than they were. Besides, he didn’t have any weapon and his own knife became useless with a bug in it.

Taking another turn, Alsaan who was leading the way took a key card out of his pocket and, pressing it against a panel of the lock, unlocked one of the doors. The door wings slid apart with a soft hiss, and the guards dragged Sejikhero inside. The bright light went on and made the young man close his eyes for a moment, and when he was able to see again, they started watering immediately.

The room was brightly lit and surprisingly clean. Instead tatty walls Sejikhero could see smooth plasteel panels, lined with data-screens, polished equipment boxes and containers bearing the Taghellai clan’s labels. Glaring lamps were buzzing steadily and ventilation system was humming on the ceiling. Sejikhero noticed there were neither grilles nor vents here which meant that the door was the only exit.

Very bad.

“I’m going to leave you at this point, gentlemen,” Alsaan said. “Kamay, keep an eye on our guest. Okaro and his assistants will be here soon. Farewell, Sejikhero,” he added. “It was nice to meet you. I don’t think you’ll recognize me during our next meeting.”

“Don’t worry, Half Face,” Sejikhero answered with a smirk. “It’s really hard to forget such a snoot.”

He wanted to add something else, but a powerful punch of Kamay’s fist knocked the air out of his lungs. Sejikhero began to cough and went limp in the guards’ arms.

Taghellai shook his head and walked out the door without a word. It closed with a soft swish and seemed to be blocked off.

It looked like Kamay was waiting just for this moment – he slapped Sejikhero across the face hard, leaving the young man’s head dangle awkwardly. The next blow hit his jaw, splitting his already busted lip. Something crunched on his teeth.

“I’ll make you swallow every word that fell from your slippery tongue, brat,” Kamay hissed, squeezing Sejikhero’s chin and forcing him to look up.

“Sir, kheintarae won’t approve it if you break him now,” one of the guards commented without loosening his hold.

“Okaro will patch him up anyway,” Kamay snapped back.

Sejikhero gasped – the kick of the boot hit him in the knee pit, reverberating through the whole leg painfully. His legs grew weak, but Sejikhero didn’t even try to keep his feet and went limp in the guards’ hands. A few heavy slaps followed – Kamay decided to make sure he’d really lost consciousness – and Sejikhero’s head jerked limply.

“Enough,” Kamay gave a wave of his hand.

Sejikhero allowed them to lift him, hanging like a rag doll in their hands, and put onto the table in the center of the room. He raised his eyelids slightly, watching the guards through his eyelashes, and then at one moment with a single swift movement he stripped a knife from a hip that moved near his hand. He pulled the knife out of its fastenings, pushed himself from the table and kicked the second guard in the face. The man staggered back, lost his balance and fell on his back awkwardly, hitting the counter with small boxes. The boxes got scattered and their contents – fastenings, vials and tiny details – spilled out like a glittering cloud and crunched under feet.

Sejikhero landed on his feet, clenching his teeth – after Kamay’s painful blow his knee started to ache, responding with pain to any abrupt movement. Noticing something big and dark on the side, Sejikhero grabbed a little box and threw it towards the attacker without looking. He missed, but Kamay who had to dodge the box flying at him paused and by doing so he presented a few so much needed seconds to Sejikhero. The second guard made a dive over the table, so Sejikhero ducked and darted under the table, getting out on the other side. 

There were three of them, three against one in the enclosed space. But they were taller and bigger and, trying to corner Sejikhero, so they rather got in one another’s way. For at least a minute Sejikhero dodged and escaped their blows, not letting them catch him among the containers, pushing boxes and racks under their feet and running around the table that was secured too properly to be overturned. Sejikhero held off on throwing the knife – he wouldn’t miss, but after taking out one enemy he’d be unarmed against the other two.

With each passing moment his time was running out. Okaro was to come here soon and that meant he wouldn’t have a single chance of escape.

A pile of shiny metal strips spilled out of the box knocked under his feet, and Sejikhero scooped as many of them as his hand could fit without looking.

Scalpels.

Dago had taught his pupil well – the very first scalpel went into Kamay’s good eye. The man howled hoarsely and collapsed on the floor, clawing his face convulsively with his numbing fingers. The guards figured out the danger instantly, grabbed the first thing that came to hand – empty boxes where details had been stored – and used them as shields.  

Sejikhero was faster – the next knife plunged into his enemy’s leg, making the man roar and double over. He lowered his box enough for the next knife to hit his open mouth. The guard croaked and slumped to the floor. Sejikhero approached him and slashed his throat with the knife, barely managing to dodge the other attacker’s blade. He dashed to the side, hit his elbow on the table painfully, lost concentration for a moment and barely had time to dive under it, avoiding the next blow.  

Sejikhero tried to crawl under the table, but before he could do it, the guard fell on his knees, pressed his leg against the floor, then caught the other one, when Sejikhero attempted to kick him, and pulled the young man to himself. He pressed his full weight down onto Sejikhero’s legs and caught his arm, twisting it. Sejikhero started thrashing in his hands, trying to wriggle out and hit the attacker with the knife he kept clutching in his hand – but the guard wrestled the knife easily out of his fingers. 

“Gotcha, whore's bird,” he hissed.

Sejikhero kept kicking, trying in vain to break free, but the guard was too heavy.

Feeling something hard and sharp under his fingers, Sejikhero clenched the thing in his fist and, when the guard attempted to make him stand up, twisted desperately, nearly pulling his shoulder out of its socket, and hit the attacker in the face with a swing. The man howled, let him go and staggered back. Sejikhero collapsed on the floor and looked over – the sharp object in his clenched fist turned out to be a shard of medical glass which was now sticking out of his attacker’s nose. Sejikhero got his feet under him not without difficulty, stood up, picked up one more scalpel from the floor and finished the disoriented guard with one whack.  

And then he almost collapsed himself – the adrenaline surge receded, and pain which he hardly had felt during the fight swept through him. Sejikhero breathed in and out several times, took his attackers’ knives, after some thinking grabbed the rest of the scalpels from the floor and, approaching the door, leaned on the wall.

In a couple of minutes the door opened and three people in grayish-white uniform with adept medicae patches entered the operating room. They froze for a moment at the sight of the scene before their eyes – and this moment was enough for Sejikhero to rush out the door and slam on the lock panel with all his strength. The door clicked shut with a hiss, and Sejikhero plunged one of the knives into the panel. It started flashing, and burst LEDs tickled the young man’s fingers with stinging sparks.  

Someone began to pound at the door, which was followed by the wail of alarm sirens from the ceiling. Emergency lamps turned on blinking, drawing away advantageous darkness in the hallways in no time. Sejikhero broke into a run at top speed along the corridor, looking about frantically, then he finally found the vent grate in the wall and with a few kicks crumpled it enough to pick up with a knife.

The multicutter remained somewhere along with the rest of his belongings, but Sejikhero had currently no time to go back and look for them.

He slipped into the air duct, adjusting the grate behind him hurriedly, and crawled along the vent into the blessed darkness, chased by shrill wailing of sirens.  


	8. Chapter 8

 

Roaring sounded just a short distance away causing Shrike to flinch and open his eyes. He looked around and was about to reach the vox button to prepare his soldiers to deal with an attack that had started unexpectedly, but the roar he’d mistaken for the Tau’s flyers was being made by engines of armored transport vehicles with the Chapter symbols on their grimy sides approaching the camp.  

Shrike rubbed his face tiredly, trying to understand how long he’d dozed, settling back against the boxes. It looked like not so long. Solari might’ve been right – he could really use some good rest. Shrike picked up his helmet, got up from the boxes and, attaching it to the magnetic holster on his hip, walked towards the approaching vehicles. They were filing along the worn-down road which led to the mines to let their passengers off. A marine wearing massive captain’s armor who’d got out of one of them removed his helmet, revealing a pale charmless face half-covered with augmetics. Noticing Shrike heading towards him, the captain hurried to meet him.

“Happy to see you alive, Kayvaan! There were different rumours, and to tell you the truth, after Severax’s death we were ready for anything.”

He extended his hand and Shrike squeezed his wrist, clapping him on the shoulder guard with his other hand.

“Same here, Narem. Lost a lot?”

Korvydae looked back, watching scouts get out of the transport vehicles, fall into rank with sergeants and head to the mine entrance one group after another.

“Two were killed, one and a half squads injured, but those are mainly minor injuries. Caught up in the blast – artillery has been like hell these days, in this ruckus we didn’t always manage to retreat in time.”

Shrike nodded, looking at the scouts. Passing the captains, the younglings tried to straighten their backs and square their shoulders, but it was clear that many of them kept their legs out of mere stubbornness while others appeared frightened. For the most part of the 10th Company’s battles at the Damocles Gulf had been light, and far from everyone was ready to what they had had to face.

“Kids are tired,” Korvydae said. “We had to retreat before the official order, and a few days earlier I withdrew two units from combat – boys kept trying to fall asleep on any suitable surface.”

“We’re all tired, Narem,” Shrike noticed. “Luckily for us, the Tau are no less than we are and lost much more. We’ll have enough time to rest and redeploy.”

“Redeploy?” Korvydae turned to him. “Is it known where we’re pulling back?”

“It’s enough that we know where from,” Shrike chuckled. “We’re pulling back from the Denechai Strait. As for the exact place, we’ll figure it out after we sort out more pressing matters.”

Korvydae nodded.

“Solaq will be here in an hour,” he informed them. “We contacted him at dawn. His sector is finally quiet, and the 5th is currently evacuating to orbit. They got banged up too much to afford a ruck march across half the planet. As soon as they’re done, he’ll arrive here. There will be four of us.”

“Five,” Shrike corrected. “We contacted our cousins from Ultramarines who quarter in this sector and through them we managed to connect with Ultramar. Shaan and his company are still there. We’ll receive his answer during the day if things go well. Five of ten, Codicier Icaris as the highest rank librarian present, and Chaplain Torovac as a worthy representative of reclusiam – enough people to convene a conclave empowered to make decisions for the entire Chapter.”

Korvydae nodded again, watching the last group of scouts enter the dark mouth of the mine passage.

Eleven raven’s skulls were regarding them indifferently with their empty eye sockets. The gloom of the mine face which had been converted hurriedly into the command headquarters was brightened only by light of the holographic projector, above which a three-dimensional map of the Damocles Gulf was wavering slightly. Bluish reflections mixed with reddish spots on the discolored bones, and the skulls looked like they belonged to some undiscovered creatures rather than birds.   

Next to the fallen Master’s corvia a scuffed white gold locket gleamed dully in the center of the table. A heraldic raven engraved on it was covered with soot. In the blue light of the projector black soot turned a slate-gray shade, it looked like silver-white metal transformed into blue-black raven’s feathers.

There were six of them – six massive figures clad in black armors. White shoulder guards, white heraldic ravens on a black background, white faces – in the failing light it looked like they luminesced, turning into ghostly apparitions.

On their ghostly white faces black holes of eyes were gaping, and shadows under them made those gathered here look like the living dead.

The five helmets which sat on the table near their respective owners met the corvia skulls’ stare with the same indifferently dull one. 

Shrike took a long look at everyone present, pausing on each for a moment – on Korvydae’s plain face which seemed a wax death mask in the dim light; on Solari’s tired face on which small wrinkles deepened – once his lips constantly looked ready to smile, but today Aajz’s face had an air of pensive detachment. He was gazing into vacant space as if he knew how the conversation was going to end. Next to Solari, just across from Shrike, Captain of the 5th Company Kyrin Solaq sat – his craggy face looked like a low skilled pupil had gotten an eyeful of his master’s work and tried to carve a statue of a Raven Guard, but it had turned out far from perfect. On Solaq’s temple a fresh dark line of hastily applied surgical staples could be seen – apparently, they had had to stitch the wound right on the battlefield, in a hurry. Near Captain of the 5th Company there were two more people – the only ones among those present who didn’t have a rank of captain: Chaplain Laefin Torovac on whose armor the bird’s bones gleamed in the darkness, and Codicier Keerah Icaris, Librarian of the 3rd Company. Keerah was the youngest of them, but he possessed enough power and wisdom to be present here today.  

Shrike put aside his data-pad on the screen of which recent news reports were still creeping down and folded his hands in front of him, looking at the others.

“We have no time for long formalities, so we’ll skip them,” he said. “We’ll mourn our fallen when we know their exact number. There is a question before us now, and the future of the Chapter depends on an answer to it. Laefin,” he called, and the chaplain looked up readily, “the first word is yours.”

Torovac looked at the corvia and the locket in front of him as if seeking their advice. The beakless skull was staring right at the chaplain. 

“My opinion on this issue is clear, Captain, and I suppose the others will agree with me. I’ve been serving the Chapter for many years and for many years I led brothers into battle, so I know what power can be found in the right words and well-timed actions. I know what strong armor glory is sometimes and what a fearsome weapon reputation can be.”

“Glory didn’t protect Severax,” Shrike shook his head. “Even more, as transparent it seemed from outside as nontransparent it turned out to be inside. He could see nothing beyond it. And his reputation happened to be the weapon which slew him.”

“Very true,” Torovac said. “This is the difference between a real leader and one trying to be him. One who’s willing to be a leader cares about how his actions look to others. He seeks glory and approval. One who deserves this title proves his power rather by deeds than by words. Truly brave deeds are performed in silence.”

“I know a lot of chapters whose brethren wouldn’t agree with you,” Shrike chuckled.

“But it’s we who are here now, Captain,” the chaplain shook his head, not swallowing the hook. “Besides, we need not just a leader, but someone whose glory is enough for others to come flying to its blaze. Severax used to command all imperial troops in the sector, and responsibility for them will be imposed on his successor’s shoulders. We need someone they’ll accept as their commander. Someone whose radiance they will follow out of the darkness. And who won’t be blinded by this radiance like Corvin was.”

“In other words, we need a hero,” Solari smiled with the corner of his mouth.

Torovac nodded.

“You’re absolutely right, Captain. We need a hero.”

 “It significantly reduces the pool of possible candidates,” Korvydae smirked from his place. “Especially given the fact that we don’t have the possibility for emergency call of someone absent here.”

“Why are you all staring at me like that?” Shrike inquired, looking at everyone at the table in turn.

“Shrike, this conversation is pointless from the very beginning,” Solari said. “The only suitable candidate is so obvious that I definitely see no point in lengthy discussions.”

Shrike shook his head.

“Talk for yourself.”

“Aajz is right, Kayvaan,” Korvydae agreed. “This discussion is nothing more than a sheer ceremony. While Corvin carried official duties of Master on his shoulders, you did all the work. You commanded the Raven Guard units here. Finally, you are famous enough for Tybalt and his company to accept you as their commander. Besides,” Korvydae smiled wryly, “you’re the only one Captain Kor’Sarro listens to. Even Severax had to admit it.”

“You’re nuts,” Shrike rubbed his face with his palms. “Both of you. How are you going to explain to the rest of the Chapter why the post of its Head was taken over by Captain whose mistake cost the previous Master’s life? Or you’re willing to add a split in the Chapter to our problems?”

“There’s always someone discontented,” Solari shrugged. “No Chapter has ever had a Master who would please everyone from neophytes to honourable Dreadnoughts. As for your… mistake,” he paused for a moment and looked down at the corvia which sat in the center of the table as if with silent reproof. “Severax made much more of those. And their price turned out to be more horrible.”

“Kyrin,” Shrike called. “What do you say?”

 “I’m waiting patiently for the moment you quit this coquetry” Solaq snorted. “It was you who said we had no time for long formalities, so why do you keep bringing them in here? The answer is clear, Shrike. You seem to be the only one who’s still persisting.”

“Voting for oneself is immodest,” Shrike shook his head and turned to Icaris who was silent all this time. “Keerah, you’re my last hope. Tell them you had a vision according to which I can’t be appointed Master.”

“Future is a dynamic value, Captain,” the librarian made a helpless gesture. “I saw a lot of possible scenarios, some of them were more likely to occur while others were almost unfeasible. I saw your death and your victory, moments of your triumph and your weakness. But I must admit I haven’t seen any ways by which you’d lead our Chapter to disgrace and downfall.”

“All told, five votes out of six,” Korvydae resumed. “Have you already received Shaan’s answer?”

“I have,” Shrike nodded, tapping his finger on the pad. “He’s woefully unoriginal.”

“It’s unanimous then,” Solari nodded. “Shadow Conclave handed down its decision.”

“Unanimous,” Solaq confirmed.

The others limited themselves to short nods.

Shrike took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. The empty eye sockets of the bird’s skulls were staring at him unseeingly just like their owner did several hours ago.

“Well,” Shrike got up from the table and gave a polite bow. “Thank you for the honour. I’m not going to promise I won’t let you down or disappoint you, but I swear I’ll do everything in my power to prevent it.”


	9. Chapter 9

There was some noise just a short distance away and Sejikhero flinched, opening his eyes. He looked around, ready to leap to his feet and dart away, but the even buzzing turned out to be just humming of vents activated over his head. The buzzing kept growing louder, the floor and the walls started to vibrate shallowly. Vent blades were gathering their peak speed, and that meant there was an interval between working shifts – regular air purification was performed during breaks. Sejikhero rubbed his face with his hands tiredly – this buzzing from all sides seemed to envelop him and reverberated inside unpleasantly, so it became even harder to remain in place. 

Sejikhero wondered what interval it was – morning, afternoon or evening one. Or even a night one – climbing through almost identical pipes and passages, Sejikhero totally lost track of time. He had no idea how long he’d been here – one day, two, three or maybe even a whole week. At first, he’d taken cues from the buzzing of vents which had been turned on during the intervals between shifts, but then he’d lost count – sometimes he got so far that the vents couldn’t be heard, and sometimes when pain and weariness gained the upper hand, he started to imagine noise and vibration. 

After Sejikhero had run away from Taghellai’s people, a ventilation shaft had led to the maze system of pipes which provided Kaohrna’s industrial levels with air and water and directed waste products away outside the city limits.

Sejikhero was aware they were going to look for him. There was no way he could return to the slums – it was where they would look for him in the first place, and among the inhabitants of lower levels there would be quite a few people willing to get a price for his head. And there would be much fewer those ready to risk their neck and hide a runaway chased by the Taghellai clan.  

He had only two ways here, in Kaohrna – down, to the underhive abound with mutants where no sane person would dare go and where Sejikhero wouldn’t last more than two days, or up where government officials would join the manhunt. 

It left him with the third option – getting to the junction point and leaving Kaohrna by passenger or freight train.

But to do this, he had to leave the pipes to at least get his bearings and find out how far he’d got. Sejikhero had no idea where he was and how long it had been since he’d entered these intricate sewerage systems.

But he knew he couldn’t stop.

Several times he saw regulation boot prints, heard steps and voices, noticed flashlight spots dancing on the walls and lights of night-vision devices flickering in the darkness.

Hiding in the shade, Sejikhero listened to their conversations, and it was the only source of information he had at his disposal.

Taghellai was looking for him.

The other clans joined the hunt. Their heads understood that anyone who brought the runaway – alive or dead – to the head of the Taghellai clan could look to benevolence. Under the conditions of the increasing conflict it was a fair reward.

That was why Sejikhero kept moving ahead, retreating further and further, covering his tracks and confusing his pursuers. From time to time he managed to steal a few hours of fitful sleep, taking refuge in an empty pipe or huddling between pipes in a dark corner, feeling aches and pains in his exhausted beaten body. It was likely he slept longer though – he wasn’t sure how much time passed between the moment he found a suitable corner and zonked out, falling into a semblance of sleep, and the moment he woke up again when it took some time to realize in what reality he was. Pain followed him wherever he went, flaring up in his shoulder or sore knee.  

The only thought was running through his head was to get to the junction point.  

A heavy cloudy drop of liquid swelled slowly – and, coming off the pipe, fell into his waiting hands.

Eighteen.

Sejikhero licked his dry lips, but didn’t move. Drops, one after another, filled his cupped hands gradually, and Sejikhero drank this water, running his palm over his cracked lips. The water tasted like chemicals and left an unpleasant aftertaste, but it was still better than nothing. The last time Sejikhero had come across a source of drinkable condensed water was quite a while, and the young man was thirsty. He still could feel bitter taste on his tongue. Mildew which grew on damp water pipes and had been his only food in the last few days – or months? – tasted like rat’s crap soaked in a puddle of factory waste. But at least Sejikhero knew it was non-toxic and good enough to fill his stomach.

At the time Dago had explained his pupil how to survive while on the run without any possibility to steal food and water, and now Sejikhero was grateful to his mentor more than ever.

Mildew had a rancid taste and seemed to roll over in his stomach before it settled down and started digesting, but Sejikhero didn’t complain. His knee ached even worse recently and made running more difficult. If it carried on like this, he wouldn’t be able to budge, and then he’d be found and killed. Unless local rats finished him up or he died of starvation.

Sejikhero waited for the water to fill his cupped hands once more, took a sip and drew his wet fingers over his face, banishing unwanted weakness. He scrambled to his feet, checked if his stock of knives was still on him and went on ahead, along the wall, through vapour suspended in the air and semi-darkness reigning around.

He didn’t know how long he had been walking before he found himself leaning against the wall in an effort to catch himself. Hunger and exhaustion were taking their toll, and apparently he had almost fainted. Sejikhero shook his head and slapped his cheeks. His split lip and swelling which hadn’t disappeared yet responded with sharp pain and it was sobering enough for Sejikhero to come round. He tore himself away from the wall and moved on.

Something started buzzing ahead, and Sejikhero observed that another vent had been turned on – only a moment later he realized that this buzzing was too even and steady. Sejikhero pressed his ear against the wall – sure enough, a freight tunnel was situated just behind the partition. It meant there must have been the way out of the pipes somewhere nearby where waste was dumped to trolleys. It meant he’d be able to get out of here.  

This thought lifted Sejikhero’s spirit, so he squared his shoulders and moved on.

Getting to the spot where several tunnels crossed, forming a wide site, Sejikhero peeped from around the corner carefully – and an instant later darted into the shade again. He thought there was someone in one of the tunnels. Sejikhero turned around and staggered back, facing two green lights which were staring right at him.

This face which was looking at him fixedly was hardly suggestive of a human’s one because of heavy augmetics on it – night-vision devices, an air-filtration mask…

Sejikhero flinched and recoiled.

Taghellai had found a far more interesting object for demonstration of his product’s possibilities than mutants from the underhive…

The man stepped forward – a knife flashed in his hand shining dully in the dim light of a single lumen-strip that illuminated the intersection. Sejikhero groped for a couple of remaining scalpels desperately and clenched them in his fist. He had a very vague idea of what could be hidden in the hunter’s belly, but he wasn’t going to let them take him alive.

Sejikhero heard rustling at the side, and one more figure emerged from the tunnels. Green lights of its eye augmetics were looking at Sejikhero unwinkingly.

 “Surrender,” it murmured under the muzzle of its respirator. “Surrender, and you’ll be spared.”

Sejikhero made another step back.

“Screw you,” he croaked.

The hunter moved forward – and Sejikhero threw both his scalpels in turn without much hope of success. Both hit their target, one sank into the hunter’s shoulder, the other – into his chest, but the creature ignored them completely.

Sejikhero clenched the knife in his fist and dived under the attacker’s arm, barely managing to avoid another hit from the side. He wondered where his strength had come from – he had been wobbly a moment ago, but now he was moving like a damned mutant, pushing from the walls, delivering one blow after another and slashing his enemy’s flesh. It was as if he turned into someone else, someone angry, cold and unalive.

Or he’d just lost his mind.

When the second body hit the floor, Sejikhero drew in a convulsive breath like a landed fish – and turned around just in time to repel one more blow. The third hunter darted from some side corridor, contacting the others on the move.  

Sejikhero realized he had to leave, there would be a lot of them here very soon and he was going to get killed – but he couldn’t control himself anymore. Strange icy tranquility overwhelmed him, he seemed to be able to see in the dark, stop feeling pain and his own hands, he could only hear his knife slurp wetly as it sank into the attackers’ flesh.

It seemed to him he’d already killed a hundred people, but only two dead bodies had been added to the two killed earlier. When four more hunters appeared from the corridor, Sejikhero only exhaled through his teeth, feeling the pain coming back and his numb legs getting weaker.

He raised his hand as if pointing the knife at one of the hunters – at the same moment the enemy’s head exploded in a fountain of bloody blobs, and his body fell to the ground with a thud.  

For a moment Sejikhero imagined he’d done it himself. He’d killed the hunter with his mind. That icy thing which had possessed his senses had finally turned him into a monster, into _jekharni_ , into _keilarnau._ But he stayed motionless and the hunters’ heads kept exploding one after another, splashing blood and brain matter onto the walls.  

And then Sejikhero felt chill. He didn’t realize immediately he’d gone cold with fear, looking at creatures which were emerging from the shade and approaching him. They were huge, much bigger than ordinary people, and their black armors were covered with gigantic bones taken from either people or animals or mutants. Red eyes on their oblong muzzles glowed in the dark menacingly.

Hunters.

Taghellai’s augmented soldiers modified to combat creeps from the lower levels must have looked just like that.

Sejikhero squeezed his last knife, slick with blood and hardly thinking straight, tossed it at one of armored monsters. The creature raised its hand casually and swat the ineffectual projectile off as if flicking away a troublesome fly.  

Sejikhero didn’t have any more weapons left. He clenched his fists and lunged forward in the last desperate attempt to attack – and, falling to his knees, doubled over in a fit of stifling cough which turned into nausea. He almost puked, aftertaste of blood and bitterness remained on his lips. Everything reeled in a frenzied dance before his eyes, Sejikhero felt weakness overwhelm his body and then he was falling on his face.

He was caught, limp like a wet rag, someone settled him in more comfortable position, something warm and alive touched his face followed by something wet run over his cheeks and lips. His abrasions began to sting. Sejikhero was almost unconscious and barely felt his own body - he heard their hollow deep voices as if through the layer of water, making out the words with difficulty.  

“…looks like intoxication on top of everything else.”

“…earlier. Caerdae… ell you on that, Keebris.”

“…enough to…”

“Enough for what?”

“…will die because of your curiosity.”

“No one has died in my care yet,” a merry voice said very close.

Something clicked and cleared in Sejikhero’s head, or perhaps it was the unexpected mirth which sounded in a deep but not old voice. Sejikhero tried to lift his eyelids to see the person, but his body didn’t obey.

“Under your charge, Ghaaraj-do,” the other voice answered. “You will explain everything to Caerdae yourself. Is he alive?”

“And even awake,” said someone called Ghaaraj-do. “Don’t be afraid,” he added softer.

With a sort of sixth sense Sejikhero understood that the voice was talking to him.

“You’re going to feel better now.”

He felt a pinch in the neck as if a blood-sucking insect bit it. Then pain disappeared, shaking and weakness receded, and Sejikhero fell into warm, thick and cozy darkness and floated in it, rocking on its waves slightly, somewhere far away.

There was too much red.

Sejikhero could feel this bright scarlet under his closed eyelids as if the glowing fog in which the tops of Kaohrna’s buildings sank descended and obscured everything.

He felt warm and calm in this fog.

There was no pain, his tense muscles relaxed finally, and the surface on which his tired body was lying took a necessary form to grant a welcome rest.

Too good.

Sejikhero attempted to move. His relaxed body hardly obeyed and he realized what the reason of this euphoria was. If he wasn’t dead – and it really looked like he wasn’t – then he was drugged.

Then he started to remember.

Dark pipes, his sore body, and huge armored monsters.

Taghellai’s hunters.

Sejikhero flinched and rose on his elbows abruptly, but felt a dizzy spell coming, lay back and closed his eyes. Dizziness passed soon, and Sejikhero was able to open his eyes.

Everything was red indeed. From the side, through a large opening which was covered with vertical plastic plates, red glow filtered and tinged the lightly colored walls with red. 

Sejikhero looked around. The place where he ended up appeared to be a hospital ward – besides the big comfortable bed on which Sejikhero was lying covered with a lightweight though warm coverlet, the most of the room was occupied with stands and equipment. The pieces of equipment flashing with led lights were buzzing softly and soothingly, chrome plated surfaces reflected specks of the red light from the opening. Dark unpowered lamps could be seen on the ceiling.

There was not a single ventilation grill, but based on a soft even hissing noise, they still had some sort of air supply system.

Sejikhero frowned. They seemed to take their past experiences with him into account. The only exit was a wide door just opposite to his bed, but Sejikhero couldn’t see any fuse boxes or panels on the wall to find a cue how to open it.

Sejikhero stirred, found on his arm a row of sensors whose wires went to the nearest piece of equipment and, lifting the coverlet a little, examined himself. He wore nothing besides bandages and compresses. Sejikhero run his hand over his chest and stomach just to make sure but didn’t find any fresh stitches. He found only a few adhesive patches on his head and face where bruising used to be.

No evidence of surgery, and it looked like they hadn’t stuffed him with any giblets so far.

Did Half-Face change his mind? If so, why didn’t they kill him? Did they decide to make an advantageous exchange?

Sejikhero put his head back on the pillow – or whatever comfortable thing was under his head – and tried to remember. 

They had done something to him unless it was a dream. He could remember, vaguely, bright light, touches, pain and prodding – in his wrists, creases of his elbows, his ankles and even his neck for some reason. He could remember that ache in his knee when the swelling under it had been dissected and everything that had pressed on it all this time had begun to come out. He could remember buzzing and rattling of instruments, metallic clanking of details against one another and deep voices very close.

The voices had quarreled, disputed something. Their Kiavahran had sounded funny – Sejikhero had been able to understand them but had failed to recognize the accent.  

“Sometimes I think you do it on purpose, Ghaaraj-do,” the man who was speaking had clearly tried to put some irritation in his voice, but it hadn’t sounded convincing.

This talk had given the impression of being repeated not for the first time. Something had buzzed and clanged.

“Come on, Caerdae,” the second had answered. “You like it.”

“Stitching up all the half-dead meat you fish out of another dumpster? I’m so thrilled.”  

 “If you got tired of it, you’d come back to the Spire and ask for work on the battlefield. There you’d stitch up half-dead meat extracted from tanks and armor.”

“At least that half-dead meat dies on the operating table more seldomly.”

“No one I’ve brought here has died so far.”

“You think it’s thanks to you?”

“I think we’re a perfect team formed by your hands and my good luck. By the way, Rann, you still owe me one more little raven.”

“You’ll get your little raven after I stitch him up.”

‘Ghaaraj-do’. The strange word was right on the tip of his tongue, emerging from the depths of his subconscious. One of the hunters had been called like this there in the tunnel. But Sejikhero had never heard this name though he had rough knowledge about all known hunters of Kaohrna.

Ghaaraj-do.

‘A good hand.’

‘No one has died in my care yet’, he had said.

That meant Sejikhero was supposed to be taken alive.

Sejikhero’s temples started to ache – his brain was definitely against hard thinking – and Sejikhero rubbed them tiredly with his fingers. He was completely befuddled and didn’t understand where he was, what they had done to him and what they were going to do next. Besides, he didn’t have the faintest idea how he could escape from here.

The door wings hissed and slid apart. Sejikhero tensed and propped himself up on his elbows. Another armored giant who looked nothing like a human being entered the room. He was completely white – his white armor, covered with additional equipment, was almost the same color as his pale face on which the eyes were dark like two black sinkholes. His thin black eyebrows seemed drawn – as if someone had added them on a marble statue out of mischief. Multiple servo-arms could be seen behind his back and turned him into a huge spider.

One of the shoulder pieces featured a black heraldic raven breaking its all-white wholeness – a sacred symbol known to any inhabitant of Kiavahr.

Sejikhero’s heart skipped a beat.

The Raven Guard Chapter.

The giant in front of him was a creature from the legends told by former guards who ended up in the slums. The God-Emperor’s Angels who lived on Kiavahr’s moon and looked at stirring in hive-cities indifferently. They didn’t care about the mortals’ fuss, they defended Imperium from threats that made underhive mutants look like jack-straws from children’s fairy tales. Sejikhero had heard the stories about them from old Mevar, heard people whisper that Angels took the mortals who attracted their attention with them, and the ones taken were reborn to their kind in agony to join their infinite war.

It meant he was about to.

“Are you awake?” the giant asked and stepped closer.

Sejikhero recognized his voice – it was he who had talked about stitching up half-dead meat, and it seemed it was he to whom the person called ‘Ghaaraj-do’ had referred as ‘Caerdae’.

“I’m brother apothecary Rann Caerdae,” the giant said as if he’d read Sejikhero’s mind. “You have nothing to be afraid of, boy. I mean no harm. Let me take a look at your wounds.”

Sejikhero didn’t have time to answer, but Caerdae didn’t wait for his answer – he approached and took the cover off Sejikhero. He gave the bandages a cursory glance, nodded to his own thoughts and, moving one of the wheeled stands closer, started to unwind the elastic rollers and detach the compresses.  

Sejikhero felt like a fly in a spider’s legs – the apothecary’s servo-hands moved just like his real fingers, taking necessary instruments and medicine from the stand deftly, detaching adhesive patches and applying semitransparent gels on compresses. Unwittingly, Sejikhero was unable to take his eyes off the movements of his numerous limbs. There was only a short straight line of sutures under the bandage which had covered his knee, and the bruises had disappeared completely.

“How…” Sejikhero started hoarsely, cleared his throat and croaked with difficulty, “How long was I out?” 

“Five days,” Caerdae answered without distracting from his task, then he smiled with the corner of his mouth and asked, “Do you have somewhere to be so urgently?”

“No,” Sejikhero shook his head and cleared his throat again.

He felt as if his vocal cords had dried up and were going to fall off any moment.

Having finished dressing Sejikhero’s injuries, Caerdae helped him lie down and, pressing several buttons on the sensor panel, adjusted the height of the headrest, raising it slightly. Then he took a ceramic bowl from another stand, poured something from a dark pitcher into it and handed it to Sejikhero.

The young man’s fingers still trembled, so he clutched the bowl with his both hands, but the apothecary didn’t hurry to get his hand off it, helping. Sejikhero looked at the liquid, sloshing in the bowl. It was absolutely clear, and he could see even tiny scratches on the ceramic bottom. Sejikhero took a few sips – the liquid had neither taste nor smell.

“What is it?” The words slipped out inadvertently.

“Water,” Caerdae answered simply.

“It’s strange.”

“It’s clean. Now get some rest.”

The apothecary put the bowl on the nearest piece of equipment and, checking the readings on the panel, removed several sensors from Sejikhero’s arm.

“I’ll come back in a couple of hours. If you need something, press this button.”

After Sejikhero’s nod, Caerdae turned around and left the room. The door closed with soft hissing and clicked behind him.  

Sejikhero made himself comfortable on the bed, looking at the ceiling thoughtfully. The apothecary hadn’t turned on any lamps, but Sejikhero heard these creatures could see in the dark.

The crimson light was dimming, bright red was turning into rich vinous and dark violet. Then the light went out altogether, and the gloom reigned in the room.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keilarnau (kiavahr. ‘possessed’, ‘half-human’) – in tales and urban legends this word is used to call someone who fell victim to Disastrous Forces the stories about which came with discharged veterans of Imperial Guard.


	10. Chapter 10

The rain had started outside after all. The fumes suspended in the air had reached their critical mass – or perhaps Prefectia itself had tried to wash the strangers who had worn it out from its surface. The cloudburst which had come down on Denechai hollow had put out remaining smoldering wreckage, made the rivers overflow their banks and washed out rims of the trenches.

It was tapping on the ground evenly, rustling against sheds, licking soot from the armored sides of the transport vehicles and washing away bustling and tension.  

Shrike walked out of the mine complex and, slipping his under-armor jumpsuit down to the waist, stepped under the downpour. He closed his eyes and put his face under streams, letting water – clear, free of fuel smell – wash away sweat and tiredness. His hair got soaked and clung to his back immediately; currents of water ran down his arms and shoulders, drenching his jumpsuit.

Techmarines were laboring at the captain’s – for now the captain’s – armor, mending damaged parts and covering it with new paint. The Raven Guard who had gathered in the mines – those able to stay on their feet – were brushing up hastily, scraping many-days’ mud and caked blood off their ceramite. 

The last few hours had been tense. Shrike would have preferred to spend them doing something more constructive like reviewing latest intelligence and further coordination – but instead he had to get through standard verification procedures mandatory for those who were going to take a superior position. Codicier Icaris had been the fastest to do his work – psychoscanning had taken mere minutes whereupon the librarian had announced he hadn’t found a single trace of taint.

“Taint doesn’t stick to the plague,” Shrike had joked, hearing Icaris’s conclusion.

“This is a really common misconception,” Scrounder had shaken his head after he had gotten his hands on the captain’s body right after the psychoscanning.

During the next hour Shrike had started to think in all seriousness that the vindictive apothecary had decided to get back at him for all years of their acquaintance and co-operation. Lying motionless on the table of a mobile medical scanner, Shrike had been looking at the leds glaring in front of his face and thinking about what so captivating Rovi Scrounder had found in his inner world that it had required such a careful examination.   

Finally, Scrounder had released Shrike from the field Apothecarion, finding him – with evident regret as it had seemed to the captain – perfectly healthy, except for tiredness and a few minor injuries which hadn’t posed any hazard to his life.

The last person Shrike had to meet was Brother Chaplain Laefin Torovac responsible for the future Master’s confession, steering him onto the right path, checking of purity of his intention and the candidate’s understanding of responsibility of his position. The conversation had lasted for good three hours, and, breaking free, Shrike had made it outside to get some fresh air.  

But the confession didn’t bring the relief it was supposed to give. Torovac held his position for a reason. The belief glowing in his heart was so powerful that were Laefin a librarian he’d fight without any other weapon. His quiet voice he never raised could make the badly wounded leave their bed, the desperate – find the strength, and turn the weakest into heroes.

However, Shrike felt as if he had spent last few hours not in the semi-darkness of the mine face where they had talked hidden from prying eyes, but in the interrogation room, sprawled on the table under the blinding light of bright lamps and deprived of any protection.

He knew what librarians could feel, how they were able to see lie and vibes of warp, but he had no idea what the shrewd chaplain had managed to make out behind his words. And it annoyed him.

Shrike ran his hands over his face, washing away unnecessary thoughts with rain water.  

Whatever Laefin had heard in his words he hadn’t changed his decision, still considering Shrike as a decent candidate. It meant one less possible problem.

“ _My lord_?” the sardonic voice called from behind.

“Two more hours until you can call me by my name, Aajz,” Shrike turned to him, smirking in return.  

Solari stood just at the mine exit, with his shoulder against the wall, his arms crossed. Without his power armor, the lanky Captain of the 2nd Company reduced in width dramatically, completely failing to look like a space marine. Tall and thin, clad in a black under-armor jumpsuit, Aajz Solari looked like a gha-janhu that followed the Raven Guard Chapter, searching for prey.

Shrike stepped back into the aperture, wrung his soaked hair out, and throwing it over one shoulder, settled on a box sitting just near the exit. The mine had been abandoned in the middle of a working day, so containers with mined ore remained discarded along all transport routes.

“How long did Laefin interrogate you?” Solari asked, turning to lean against the wall. 

“Three hours,” Shrike answered, rubbing his cold shoulders. “It did look more like an interrogation if you ask me.”

“How much did you tell him?”

“Enough for it to seem like a convincing confession. For all my sins,” Shrike smiled wryly, “we’d need a couple of days and two or three more chaplains – and that’s if I don’t go into detail…”

Solari smirked.

“Why did you do it, Aajz?” Shrike looked up. “The principle of the least evil?”

“The principle of choosing the worthiest.”

“Take a good look at me,” Shrike spread his arms and squared his shoulders. “What kind of a Master can I become?”

“This is what we’re going to find out,” Solari measured him with his eyes and asked quietly, “It looks like you’re just scared, eh, Kayvo?”

“I’m not,” Shrike shook his head. “Just…”

He paused for a moment, looking at the pouring rain gloomily.

“I guess I’m not used to being in the limelight. The post of a Master implies a certain amount of publicity, and I stood behind Corvin’s shoulders for too long.”

“On the bright side, now you won’t have to look back at him. You won’t have to look back at anyone.”

“…except the Conclave and the rest of the chapter.”

“You are the Master,” Solari shrugged. “It’s within your power to have the last word, to present the Conclave with a fait [accompli](http://context.reverso.net/%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B4/%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B3%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B9%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9-%D1%80%D1%83%D1%81%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9/accompli)…”

“…which won’t make me better than Severax.”

Shrike sniffed and, rising from the container, put his now dry jumpsuit back on. Then he took his place again and continued:

“A Master’s power is proportional to his responsibility. What should give me a free hand, in fact not only binds my foot and hand, but also puts a weight on my shoulders. Laefin explained it to me for three hours,” he added with a wry smile, “and you are convincing me that my power will be unlimited. You know it’s him who’s right, not you.”

“Perhaps,” Solari nodded serenely. “But I didn’t go wrong with something else. With my choice. The more you’re trying to convince me otherwise, the more I’m certain I was right.”

“So may I ask,” Shrike flared up, “ _as Master_ ,” he added ironically, “What were you guided by in your choice? You seemed to be the only one who didn’t hesitate for a second.”

“I suppose so,” Solari’s smile faded, replaced by an unusually serious expression. “Sometimes it happens that one word or action is enough to confirm someone’s opinion.”

“Is it the fact that I got Hess out which impressed you so much?”

“I saw your eyes, Kayvo.”

“So, did you realize how beautiful they are?”

“I’ve seen nicer,” Solari answered by the same token, but became more serious very quickly. “As for your eyes, there was too much anger in them. A day ago you sat on the box next to me and talked about our brothers’ deaths. In your eyes I could clearly see what would happen with anyone who made an attempt on any of our lives. That’s how I understood that with you as Master the Raven Guard Chapter would be in good hands.”

Shrike stared at him for a long time, then smirked and shook his head.

“Well, don’t whine later.”

The generators of the mine complex were activated for the first time in many days – their power was barely enough to light all lamps. The dim whitish light didn’t dissipate the darkness as much as it distorted size and form of things.

However, such decorations perfectly suited the spectacle which was unfolding here.

The Raven Guards’ polished armors reflected the half-light, and it looked like a black ceramite sea was rolling beneath the vaults of the hall. Fresh white paint of the heraldic ravens on the shoulder guards seemed to glow in semi-darkness.

Worry could be seen on the faces of the brothers who’d gathered here. Veterans frowned, young scouts looked nervous. Tension suspended in the air put the same pressure on the shoulders of both. Any murmur, creak and whisper echoed from the walls boomingly – but when Shrike entered the hall whispers and hubbub subsided, and the room got dead quiet save for the sound of the captain’s steps.

For now, the captain’s. 

For fifty more steps Kayvaan Shrike would be Captain of the 3rd Company.

His armor was repaired and scrubbed clean, regalia took their rightful places and its snow-white parts were covered with fresh paint. He was too… white, too bright in this dense dusk soaked with tension.

Step by step, Shrike moved towards, where on the raised dais the other captains, Chaplain Torovac and Librarian Icaris were waiting for him. He didn’t turn around but could feel all gazes focused on him with his skin.

His command squad, his Wing lined up in the very front rows, five on either side, as if making a corridor of honor. Shrike’s eyes flitted over their faces vacantly. They all had come a long way, fighting side by side with the captain, they all had been chosen and trained by him personally – and they all had survived in the bloodbath of Denechai to stand here today.

Reaching the platform, Shrike went up, squaring his shoulders and looking at the others. Chaplain Torovac started speaking, and his quiet clear voice could be heard in each corner of the hall.

Shrike wasn’t paying much attention to what he was saying. Totally unnecessary words were falling from his lips one by one – about Severax’s death, their new leader, Shrike’s virtues.

Ceremonial junk.

While Torovac was speaking, Shrike was looking at the faces of the Raven Guards who stood in front of him. He didn’t see any reproof in their eyes, but he didn’t see any approval, either.

Dead Severax’s black staring eyes resurfaced in his mind.

Surprise. Deprecation. Chagrin.

Torovac went from obligatory ceremonies to the main point, and Shrike, getting down on one knee in front of the chaplain, swore sacred oaths to serve the Raven Guard Chapter, one after another. Torovac took a white-gold medallion from a serf who stood next to him and hung it around Shrike’s neck. Shrike touched it with his fingers for a moment. It was repaired, straightened out and burnished, black soot was gone, once again giving place to silver metal.

As if just a day ago it hadn’t rested on the neck of the marine who had fallen victim to his own arrogance. Now it was whole again as if reminding that the chapter would exist despite all the ordeals it had been through.  

Shrike clenched it in his fingers and stood up, looking at the marines in front of him. They were silent, waiting for their new Master’s first words.

“Last night took too many lives,” Shrike said, and his voice echoed under the vaults of the hall. “This night, a great hero of the Imperium has been taken from us,” his head bowed in respect. “Not for millennia has our proud brotherhood been united under a leader of Severax’s skill, who achieved so much with a few blades. It’s a keen loss.”

 Shrike paused for a moment. The others were also silent. The tension suspended in the air could be almost touched.

“Yet that loss heralds a brighter future,” continued Shrike, his voice growing steadily in volume. “This night, the Raven Guard will change. We shall seek the solace of shadows, as we always have, as our father Corax taught us. But from this point on, we will use every weapon at our disposal, every alliance we can forge. We can afford no other course. Here, on Prefectia, we leave in our wake a new dawn. A dawn of fire, of flashing talons raised in a single cause and quenched in alien blood. Though we must gather our strength anew, we will tear the throat from the foe as payment for their temerity. The Imperium upon Prefectia shall stand divided no more!”

Quiet grumbling could be heard in the crowd. Shrike felt the senior officers’ stares on his back. He was able to guess what they looked now – Solari with a knowing smile, Korvydae frowning perplexedly, Solaq who turned sulky, impenetrably calm Icaris, and Torovac with his usual air of detachment whose face didn’t give away if he’d heard the whole point hidden behind the Master’s words. But Shrike didn’t turn around.

“There is a lot of hard work to be done yet,” he continued, looking at those gathered below. “But now we depart. Maintain contact between squads, avoid unnecessary fighting and save every life. Let it begin!”

The black ceramite sea was roused and began to roar – brothers raised their sparkling talons, polished swords and power war hammers up, hailing their new Master.

Shrike smiled faintly and nodded in response to their salutation.

Much was going to be different in the chapter from this day – but some things would remain the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gha-janhu (kiavahr. ‘a faceless thing’) – a monster from Kiavahr urban legends, most probably, based on the appearance of some mutants from the underhive. It looks like an unnaturally tall and thin anthropomorph covered with black skin that’s able to crawl through pipes, climb walls and also stick its hands into air inlets to reach its victims. It’s often used to scare children into keeping away from unfamiliar holes.


	11. Chapter 11

For the next few days, Sejikhero was getting used to the idea that he didn’t have to run anywhere anymore, and that his body didn’t respond to movement with pain. During the first night every little sound made him flinch, so he lifted his head off the pillow and looked around, trying to figure out feverishly where he was and from which direction the noise came. Then he remembered everything and fell asleep again. He slept well here, it was quiet and warm, no hard surfaces and uncomfortable positions made his bones ache.

They didn’t give his clothes back to him – those rags crusty with blood, sweat and dirt must have been thrown right to the disposal. Dressed in a loose knee-length shirt, Sejikhero who was used to hard-wearing durable clothes, felt like a snail out of its shell. The synthetical gruel he was fed with was bland and odorless, it didn’t taste bitter on his tongue, leaving only an amazing feeling of fullness. Caerdae hardly bothered him – he entered once a day to change bandages or remove a compress no longer needed, took Sejikhero’s biometric signs and disappeared again.

He wasn’t talkative. The air of concentration and detachment on his face didn’t incline Sejikhero to ask questions, either

Sejikhero did figure out how to turn on the lights in the room – besides the ceiling lamps, there was a thin lamp over his bed – but usually he preferred familiar semi-darkness illuminated only by the light from the covered opening. It changed its color like the fog over Kaohrna’s buildings – it was white, then yellow, then crimson, then it burst with hues of orange and turned purple.

On the third day when Caerdae left the room after another examination Sejikhero risked standing up. His legs didn’t work as well as he’d hoped, but well enough for him to reach the opening.

Sejikhero looked behind the flaps and froze, stunned by what he saw.

It looked like one of the huge panoramic pictures he had seen in richly furnished studies. Something like this had hung over Kefah’s table, but it hadn’t portrayed even half of the beauty which spread out before the young man’s eyes.

There was the sky around him. It seemed to be everywhere - yellowish-orange below but turning crimson above. Dark purple smudges of clouds had shining gold bottom edges, illuminated by a bright orange star which was descending to the skyline steadily, spilling light on black spires, towers and chimneys spitting heavy smoke shining with gold and orange.

Everything there was glowing, sparkling and blazing with millions of lights – on buildings and between them. The lights were flying over spires, white, red, now shooting up, now going out again, some coming closer, while others moved away. They rose and went to the sky, turning crimson, they descended, turning from crimson to yellow and white.

Noticing several familiar silhouettes, Sejikhero narrowed his eyes, looking at the shapes of the buildings more carefully and trying to recognize those of them he’d heard about.

It looked like it was Kaohrna. The Kaohrna he’d never seen beyond his home slums.

Sejikhero pressed against the glass and tried to figure out where he was and what was below, but he could see only rising cliffs drowning in the fog illuminated with the setting sun.

The sun.

Sejikhero found himself thinking that he was seeing it for the first time in his life.

He looked up again, squinting against bright light and scrutinizing the city.

“– An impressive sight, isn’t it?”

Sejikhero turned around.

He didn’t hear the door of his room open and nor notice the guest step inside. The stranger, despite his size and strange clothes managed to move completely without sound.

His face was as white as Caerdae’s, but its expression was far friendlier; his entirely black eyes were a bit squinty, making his smile somewhat roguish. Unlike the smooth-shaven apothecary, this Raven Guard had long bluish-black hair which was braided into many thin pigtails on his temples. He didn’t wear armor, only loose black clothes with a belt, the buckle in the form of a raven’s skull. As if to make up for it, his arms were adorned with an array of braided wristbands lined with bird skulls, and a similar construction completed with a wealth of small coins hung on his belt. By all rights, it should have been jingling with small noises, but it didn’t for some reason, and Sejikhero couldn’t help envying the stranger.

 “You’d better go back to bed,” the guest ordered, taking a stool from the corner and sitting down with confidence as though he owned the place. “Rann can’t stand it when his patients get willful.”

As if in support of his words, Sejikhero’s knee started aching again, so he limped to the bed and sat down, his feet hanging off the side.

He recognized the stranger’s voice.

 “Ghaaraj-do,” Sejikhero half-asked half-stated.

“Have they already told you about me?” Ghaaraj-do raised his eyebrow gibingly.

“No,” Sejikhero shook his head. “I… I remember your voice.”

“I did tell them you were awake,” Ghaaraj-do smirked.

“They called you in some different way,” Sejikhero frowned, trying to recall the name. “…Keebris.”

“They always call me by name when they intend to give me a lecture,” Ghaaraj-do made a helpless gesture. “I’m Keebris Ghaan, Chief Chaplain of the 5th search team. But they call me Ghaaraj-do more often, so if you want you can call me that when we’re alone.”

“Why do they call you that?”

Instead of answering, Ghaaraj-do took the construction made of bird’s skulls and small coins off his belt and showed it to Sejikhero.

“People say I have a good hand,” he smiled. “No matter how seriously injured a recruit I found is, he always survives and goes to Deliverance. Each time, I bet Caerdae a little raven and I’ve never lost yet. All these coins are the boys I found. Rann has already paid me for you, too,” he snickered and returned the coins to his belt. “Though the whole team had some doubts that you would make it to the base.”

“The base?” Sejikhero asked.

“Haven’t you asked Caerdae where you are?” Ghaaraj-do asked with surprise. “I suppose Rann is not really talkative. That’s why I’m here,” he added, looking back to the door. “Your questions must have piled up, but there was no one to answer them. So, in simple words, you’re in one of our nests. In the official register it’s classified as ‘Raven Guard Chapter’s observation post phi-delta-epsilon-two-fourteen’ situated on Bird Ridge 50 kilometers from Kaohrna. Here we have the training facility for our chaplains who undergo their last trials. Recruits we find are brought here as well.

“I heard those taken by Corax’s warriors were raised straight up, to Deliverance,” Sejikhero gave a shrug of his shoulder.

“On beautiful glaring platforms descending in a cloud of crimson flame? Bogus stories,” Ghaaraj-do answered dismissively. “No one is going to send a freighter up and down for every single boy. Especially since many of those selected need medical assistance. Like you.”

“Why do you do it?” Sejikhero asked.

For some reason Ghaaraj-do’s words about assistance hurt him – he got an unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach as if he was obliged to earn the provided service.

“First, true talent really often manifests itself in critical situations,” Ghaaraj-do answered, still smiling, then he added more seriously, “Second, even the desperate street scum deserves another chance.”

Sejikhero shrugged. In the world he’d lived, there were no second chances.

“I was also pulled out of a gutter,” Ghaaraj-do continued. “In fact, I was already almost dead. I killed five people but didn’t have any energy for the sixth one. However, the chaplain who led that search team decided to take a chance and brought me to the base. As you can see,” he spread his arms as if inviting to look at him. “I happened to be so lucky that now I gladly share my luck with others.”

Sejikhero smiled in response, but his smile was fleeting. He understood what could draw Raven Guard Chapter’s chaplains’ attention to him, but still…

 “I can see there’s a question which is tormenting you,” Ghaaraj-do uttered softly. “Ask it.”

Sejikhero looked up into the chaplain’s black eyes.

“When exactly did you notice me?” he asked after a pause.

“Long enough to assess your potential.”

“All this time you’ve been watching me?”

“We haven’t been ‘watching’ you,” Ghaaraj-do corrected. “More like ‘keeping an eye’ on you.”

“Then why…” Sejikhero paused for a moment, choosing the words so that his next question didn’t sound reproachful. “Why didn’t you interfere earlier? Then Apothecary Caerdae wouldn’t have had to stitch me up.”

“A rational argument,” Ghaaraj-do nodded. “I hear it from Rann every time I bring another recruit, but put it bluntly, seldom did I hear it from the recruits themselves. You caught my interest, Sejikhero. Every time I thought you’d reached your limit, you found the strength to climb the next step. I must admit my curiosity had gone too far, but now I have something to write in your record.”

Ghaaraj-do wanted to add something else, but suddenly something near his temple clicked. Touching his ear with his fingers, he started speaking in a language Sejikhero didn’t understand. It sounded beautiful and even a bit solemn though Ghaaraj-do’s intonation was far from formal. Finishing, the chaplain stood up.

 “I need to go,” he said. “Someone wants to see me. But I’ll return and tell you everything you wish to know.”

He reached out and tousled Sejikhero’s hair before he left. Sejikhero shook his head, staring after him. This gesture of affection was unexpected and unfamiliar, and he felt the touch of those inhumanly strong and yet careful fingers in his hair for a long time.

Getting out of the bed, Sejikhero went to the window again and looked out from behind the curtain. The sun was almost down and now Kaohrna looked like a single cloud of multicolored lights, sparkling and flickering. Above, halfway over the horizon, there hung the pink-whitish disc of Deliverance – the moon shrouded in legends – it was where Sejikhero was to go very soon.

In the following days he almost forgot about it – the life in the nest was almost as luxurious as on the top levels of Kaohrna. Stories that Sejikhero knew about only from hearsay. Much of what people from below whispered about enviously was seen with his own eyes and even used to his heart’s content.

As Sejikhero was healing up, Apothecary Caerdae allowed him more and more derogations from the diet. Bland synthetic gruel was replaced by delicious hot meals. Sejikhero, who was used to eating just to maintain strength found out with surprise that food could give pleasure.

Here he didn’t have to smear the remaining disguising paint all over his face with a piece of old cloth and wash himself with water which had been reused three times before – here he could wash his whole body under clear odorless spray. When Sejikhero was showering for the first time, he took a handful of water, sipped some to try and snorted disapprovingly – for him who had grown up in the slums of Kaohrna such waste of resources seemed blasphemous. But temptation was too strong, and Sejikhero, peeling off his shirt, stepped under the warm spray which wrapped him immediately, washing away sweat, tiredness and healing gel residue.

He felt as if a large inheritance had dropped onto him out of nowhere and let him suddenly find himself on the very top of Kaohrna. There was clean water around him, there were no cracks in the light-colored wall panels, brownish mud mixed with mildew didn’t squelch under his feet. Instead, his bare feet tingled with the mesh cover of the metal drain.

The last time Sejikhero saw his reflection was in the murky water surface, in Taghellai’s basement – at least it was the last time Sejikhero remembered. Quite a few days had passed since then – they seemed more like a lot of months – and then he had born little resemblance to a human being.

That’s why the person who stared at Sejikhero from the mirror after he finished showering looked a stranger.

He was used to seeing black smudges around his eyes – he had almost never managed to rub all disguising paint off – so his own features were pretty new for him. His whitish faded-like hair was much longer than his usual crew cut, and it stuck out like wet spikes now. With no swellings, bruises, paint and permanent dark circles under his eyes, Sejikhero noticed with a smirk how pale he was. Fair eyebrows, fair eyes, an ash white face so typical for Kiavahr…

Mold from the lower slums.

Sejikhero snorted and started drying himself with a towel.

A full belly and comfort dulled the sense of alarm, distracted him from unnecessary thoughts – but an ember of anxiety was still glowing inside. At night, Sejikhero lay awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling and wondering what he should do next. He’d have to pay for all this luxury surrounding him very soon. Sejikhero heard enough tales and rumors about what happened in the chapters of space marines and he knew enough about the process of rebirth. Some of those tales were in fact confirmed – Ghaaraj-do just like he’d promised readily answered Sejikhero’s questions, and the more he talked the more Sejikhero realized he didn’t want to end his days in the name of someone else’s ideals.

Ghaaraj-do talked about many things, and the young man kept having a feeling that the chaplain tried to convince him that death in the name of the Emperor was the supreme good – but for Sejikhero who was used to surviving at any cost and deciding how to live his own life and who absolutely didn’t want to die, this good seemed pretty questionable. He had grown up in the place where every person could rely only on themselves, where no one waited for the Emperor’s help and where laws of Imperium didn’t work. Seeing all this, Sejikhero didn’t believe they could work anywhere else.

Ghaaraj-do apparently did notice it – but he didn’t try to push. He just smiled with the corners of his lips knowingly when Sejikhero answered his questions. It seemed when he asked, he knew exactly what answers would follow.

“I’ve been serving as chaplain for half of century now,” he said with a little laugh when Sejikhero asked him about it.

The more their conversations lasted, the more Sejikhero was convinced of the idea that he must get out from there – the faster the better. He understood that escaping from space marines who had tracked him down at the time and followed him for darkness knows how long was going to be a much more complicated task. Besides, where could he hide? They had tracked him down in the slums, found him in the sewage systems – he wouldn’t likely to escape if he stayed in Kiavahr.

Consequently, after leaving the facility he had only one way – to take off the planet in the next spaceship. But to do so, he needed to get out of there.

When Sejikhero was allowed to leave the ward and given comfortable breeches and a tunic, the first thing he did was to search all the territory he had access to. On the second day he explored the nooks which were harder to sneak into.

But he found out it wasn’t so easy to find the exit.

Too complicated security systems, well-trained guards, surveillance cameras…

The nest was a prison.

It was a comfortable and cozy prison with beautiful view from its picture windows – but at the same time it was perfectly fortified and intelligently situated.

Escape was virtually impossible.

Sejikhero felt as if they were watching his every step. Even when he was in blind spots of cameras, when he went away far from the living quarters, he still felt someone’s eyes on his back as if the shadows themselves watched him, checking what else this bold boy would dare do.

After another midday meal, a chaplain came for Sejikhero and gave an order to follow him. The young man was sure his movements had been monitored - they were going to interrogate him. He even managed to think up more or less coherent answers to the most expected questions.

Reaching the end of the wide hall, a marine stepped aside, letting Sejikhero enter a spacious study. Most of the room was filled with racks clustered with books, scrolls, reams of paper and data pads. On the wall between them there were heads of some weird creatures, too abominable to believe they had been once alive and not man-made, and giant birds’ skulls and bones covered with amulets made of smaller bones.

Reams of paper and pads tried to drive out the only cogitator from a wide table. Another marine sat at the table. His loose black clothes reminded Sejikhero of those Ghaaraj-do usually wore when he was without his armor, with the only difference that instead of a pile of amulets, coins and skulls this marine had just one pendant necklace around his neck – a black heraldic raven on a silver background.

It was impossible to tell marines’ age from their faces, but this Raven Guard was noticeably older than other chaplains.

Sejikhero stood still at the door, trying not to make any noise – but the door leaves closed with a soft hissing sound, and the marine looked up. He nodded at the chair near the table and ordered briefly:

“Take a seat.”

Sejikhero exhaled a short breath, approached the chair with determination and sat, showing in every way his willingness to answer the questions.

“Relax, this is not an interrogation,” the marine said without looking up from his papers.

“I don’t…”

 “You’re sitting here, looking as if you’ve swallowed a metal bar,” finally, the marine deigned to look up and, putting all the papers aside, focused his full attention on Sejikhero. “Don’t worry, that’s just a standard procedure – I need to fill up the lists before sending you to Deliverance. Bureaucratic red tape which even space marines aren’t immune to,” the chaplain made a helpless gesture.

Sejikhero nodded. For some reason in his mind such a prosaic detail as paperwork ran counter to such mighty and awe-inspiring power as space marines. The chaplain pulled a data pad from the pile and, connecting it to the cogitator, started typing something.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Sejikhero,” the young man answered with a shrug. “Perhaps, Ghaara… Brother Chaplain Ghaan mentioned it?”

 “He did,” the marine agreed, “but I’m not asking how people call you. I’m interested in hearing your name. Or you have nothing besides a gang nickname?”

Sejikhero kept quiet, biting his lips broodingly and rolling the answer on his tongue. His own name was reluctant to leave it as if it pushed back, unused and abandoned long ago.

When was he called by his name last?

Sejikhero couldn’t remember.

“Kayvaan,” he answered finally and looked up. “I don’t know my father, mother never talked about him.”

It was partly true. But only partly. From the chaplain’s face, Sejikhero could see that he spotted the lie perfectly but chose not to focus on it. He just nodded and put something into the memory of the data pad.

“By what name should I register you?” he asked.

“By any you wish.”

“The simplest thing would be giving you an identification number according to the date when you were found.”

Sejikhero shook his head crossly.

 “Then just write it how it is – _Sejikherasaan_ ,” he snorted. “Let them know who they deal with.”

The chaplain turned to him and looked him up and down. Sejikhero stared into his eyes defiantly, jerking his chin up.

“Let them know, eh?” he asked sarcastically. “Okay. But not so many people speak Kiavahran in Imperium. Should I translate it into Low Gothic?”

After thinking for a while, Sejikhero nodded.

In the common Imperial language the beautiful melodious name sounded very different – shorter and harsher. It sounded biting, curt and sharp like a stab.

The chaplain typed a few more symbols and disconnected the data pad.

“Welcome to the Raven Guard, Kayvaan Shrike.”

***

 

There were ten of them – scrawny pale-skinned boys wearing standard black jumpsuits and jackets. The wind was tousling their hair, making them pull the hoods over their ears.

They followed the chaplain across the wide ground outside the base. It had rained heavily at night and the light drizzle was still dripping from the overcast sky. The surrounding rocks were drowning in the fog and the transport shuttle with its glowing side lights looked like a fairy-tale monster that opened its jaws invitingly and was waiting for silly kids to get inside.

Something shone at the side and Sejikhero turned his head, looking at the gleaming clouds on the horizon over fog-covered Kaohrna. The sun burst through them, coloring the sky of Kiavahr with crimson and gold, lit the landing field, reflected in pools and tickled his eyelashes.

It looked like the clouds were going away and the sky would be clear. The downpour seemed to wash away everything old, excess and unnecessary, taking away the fog and the night darkness.

The night [is darkest just before](http://context.reverso.net/%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B4/%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B3%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B9%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9-%D1%80%D1%83%D1%81%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9/is+darkest+just+before) the dawn. Sejikhero had heard this old saying from Mevar. Well, it was high time to check if it was truly so.

Sejikhero pulled his hood deeper and hastened his steps.

Deliverance was waiting for him ahead.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ‘Little raven’ is a colloquial name for a 10 kiv coin (the smallest currency unit in Kiavahr) head side of which depicts a raven sitting on a branch.


	12. Chapter 12

…The recent rain had cleared the air, nailed dust and carried away ashes – and the rising sun looked brighter. Prefectia burst with light, reflecting the sun in a thousand drops, pools and river surfaces, radiant like molten gold.

The snow-white armor of Kor’Sarro Khan was blazing, reflecting the golden light of the sun, making the  powerful White Scar look like a warrior from ancient sagas which sang of heroes from the times when The God-Emperor had walked among His people.

Shrike approached, letting him hear his steps, and the Khan turned to him with a welcoming smile.

“Been a while, Kayvaan.”

“Well met, you grizzled old buzzard,” Shrike grinned in response. “You can call me Chapter Master now.”

 “Ha!” Kor’Sarro chuckled, showing his sharp teeth. “I shall call you a craven, as you deserve, you shadow-licking sparrow!”

He stepped closer, grabbed Shrike’s outstretched hand and, shaking it, pulled Shrike towards his bulk, smacking him on the shoulder guard heartily.

“Master,” he stepped back and nodded deferentially. “My respects.”

Shrike nodded back nobly with his best regal look, but then gave up and smiled again.

“I had thought old Severax too cunning to die,” Kor’Sarro said more seriously.

Shrike’s smile faded.

“The Tau have an alien cunning of their own,” he answered, “and Shadowsun most of all, it seems.”

“True,” Kor’Sarro nodded.

His fur-cloacked shoulders sagged at the mention of his nemesis. One could clearly see that bitterness of defeat haunted him much worse than he tried to show.

“She cannot escape my blade forever,” the Khan continued, squeezing the hilt of his sword. “Her head shall adorn Quan Zhou’s battlements, even if I have to chase her across the galaxy to get it.”

“You may have to do just that,” Shrike frowned, looking at the rising sun. “We are too few, now, to achieve total victory. We must ensure the Tau pay as dearly as possible upon Prefectia as we gather our might and collate our findings for the next phase. We must make them bleed, break their strength so we can claim the Eastern Fringe back once and for all.”

“We this, we that…” Kor’Sarro turned to him with a perplexed expression. “You know I’m not used to hearing such things from your bird kind.”

“Get used to it,” snapped Shrike. “We stood apart for too long. It has only seen us fail.”

Kor’Sarro cocked his head with interest, staring at Shrike as if he’d seen him for the first time – and liked this new Shrike a lot better.

“We combine our strengths, then,” he half-asked, half-stated.

“We do. And those of every Imperial warrior upon Prefectia.”

“And those yet to arrive,” said the Khan, looking up at the stars. “Has there been any word?”

“Their Herald contacted me,” said Shrike. “Half a day, at most – though even that is perhaps too long a delay against a warlord of Shadowsun’s caliber. Still, I have taken pains to ensure the High King’s arrival will be… appropriately magnificent.”

Shrike looked at his fingers listlessly, and Kor’Sarro cleared his throat, pretending he didn’t notice the pause.                                                                              

“We need more than fighters,” he said, “no matter the size or pedigree. We must turn the world itself against these usurpers. It is what Prefectia was built for, after all.”

“There is truth in that. But static defenses, even hive guns – the Tau simply avoid them. They care not for ground gained, nor lost, come to that.”

“Then we turn the world’s anger against them. Conjure the storm from within it and harness it to our will.”

Shrike nodded.

“On Dal’yth and Voltoris alike, psykers proved potent assets indeed.”

“That is because the Tau have no souls, or weak ones at best,” said the Khan. “No way to counter such measures.”

“Can your Stormseers make an ally of this world, then?” asked Shrike, his head cocked to one side.

“It is what they were born to do. We shall bring the tempest.”

“Excellent,” said Shrike. “That they cannot predict, with all their sensors and scrying devices combined. Ensure the maelstrom breaks when we need it most, Kor’Sarro. At the greatest battle yet. The battle that sees White Scar spears, Raven Guard claws and House Terryn lances plunge into the same foe at the same time.”

“Ha!” snorted the Khan, “Chapter Master Shrike, Uniter of the Imperium. Desperate measures indeed.”

Shrike smiled sadly, casting a glance on the corvia on his belt. Eleven skulls on a string were staring silently at the rising sun.

“I would prefer Shrike, Bane of the thrice-cursed Tau,” he said, “If you don’t mind.”

“I suppose I could live with that,” chuckled the Khan. “You need to bring her out into the open for me, Kayvaan. If you are content to wait and hide, she will spin her web around you until you cannot escape. Instead give her a quarry, a target she thinks will clinch victory. Soon enough she will lunge for it. But she has to believe it is on her terms.”

Shrike nodded.

“I can do that. She thinks us arrogant. If we appear to overreach ourselves, attack them at a strongpoint, she will be there to claim the glory of our demise.”

“The timing will have to be impeccable, or we will leave this planet under funeral shrouds.”

“Timing, old friend,” said Chapter Master Shrike, “is something the Raven Guard mastered long ago.”

He got quiet, and for several minutes both marines looked in silence at the sun rising over the surface of the battered planet.

“So now you are a commander, eh?” asked Kor’Sarro.

“Seems like it,” Shrike shrugged his shoulder. “Now you’ll have to do exactly what annoyed you so much on Quintus – to comply with my instructions.”

“I dare believe here you will prove more useful than there,” the Khan shot back and added after a pause, “You know I’m glad it’s you. When we found out Severax was dead, at one point I was pretty sure all was lost. However, Jagatai-Khan brought wise words to Chogoris at the time. He said that the night is darkest just before the dawn.”

 “It may well be so,” Shrike nodded in reply. “But those saying it forget one thing. It’s at dawn when the shadows are longest.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The main part of this Chapter based on original text from War Zone Damocles: Kauyon supplement book.

**Author's Note:**

> 1 Hejer-bagu (kiavahr. literally ‘a bloody corpse’) a creature from the urban folklore of Kiavahr. As believed, hejer-bagu is a person who was beaten to death and returned to take revenge on their killers. Superstitious slum dwellers sometimes draw or cut a protection symbol on a corpse.
> 
> 2 Kheintarae (literally ‘senior’) an honorific title for the most authoritative person in hierarchy – a mob boss, a head of a clan or a guild. Depending on the context and social status, it can be translated both as ‘overlord’ and ‘kingpin’.


End file.
